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a salacious blessing on this wonderful world
jades in Konosuba get a tricksy isekai
Permalink Mark Unread

A circle of light illuminates a featureless floor in a black void.

There is a throne, with a shadowed figure sitting upon it, on the edge of the circle, shrouded in shadows.

There is a sign. It reads, [Congratulations. If you're reading this, you've died and yet still exist.]

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A person arrives. He looks a little out of it.

He squints at the sign.

He squints at the throne.

 

He says, "...huh. Good for me?"

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The throne slides forward, bringing the figure into light.

It is an.. extremely attractive young woman, wearing some kind of elegant regalia that none-the-less looks like the perverse lovechild of a fairy princess gown and a dominatrix outfit. Tight black leather accentuating and showing off her body, weaving a dance with flowy emerald silk and gossamer gauze with framed cut-outs exposing her breasts and crotch.

In contrast to the outfit, she greets him with a wry smile, her posture lackadaisical and not particularly seductive, elbows on knees, chin on hands.

"So," she says, "You want the long version, or the short version?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...let's have the short version first, and the long one afterward."

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"The short version is that I'm a goddess, I currently have your soul in my possession, and you have a choice with three options. And the first two options really really suck."

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He has to take a few seconds to process that, blinking irregularly.

 

"I would like the long version now please."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Heh, sure. Ahem."

The goddess sits up straight, her posture suddenly exuding regality.

"Welcome, Laurent, to your afterlife. I am the goddess Coventina, arbiter of English-speaking and Japanese-speaking souls ages 16-25. You have passed through the veil of meta-casual* anthropics to appear before me, and it is my task to usher you on to your fate. Three paths lay before you. The first is," she grimaces, breaking character for a moment, "I erase your you and put your soul back on the shelf, but the rules say I have to call that 'reincarnation'," eyeroll, "ahem. The second path is the path of ultimate rest. You may remain here, walk into the void behind me, and spend your eons communing among us gods here in the divine realm."

She pauses dramatically.

"If neither of those options appeals to you, there is a third choice you could make. There is a world in need of a champion, and to that world I would send you as you are, intact, to complete quests in my name."

She raises an eyebrow, slumping down into her previous posture. "How was that?"

*Not a typo.

Permalink Mark Unread

He listens to this with steadily climbing eyebrows. When she finishes, he takes another second to mull it over before producing a question.

"...in what way, specifically, can I expect communing with the gods for eternity to suck?"

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"Well, for one thing, gods aren't actually, as a rule, any more interesting than mortals. The other souls who've chosen the void mostly complain about how boring it is."

She stands up, and starts slinking towards him, swaying her hips, oozing raw lewdness with every step.

"Personally, my biggest complaint is this," she reaches him, and shamelessly grabs his dick through his pants. But... it doesn't feel like anything. He's aware of the touch, sensing the contact through a medium that one might deign to call 'touch', but it doesn't feel like anything at all.

Permalink Mark Unread

"...um," he says. " Yes. I can see how... um. I don't... think I would necessarily have the same complaint, but... okay. So. You mentioned a third option?"

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Coventina takes a step back, relaxing her demeanor.

"So, this world. It's one of the extramaterial planes, meaning it's not just magical but magically systemic. If you chose to be sent to this world as my champion, you will be able to learn magic and go on adventures! Like in a video game. Your quest will be to dismantle my church because they've gone completely bugfutz crazy and the last," she pauses to count on her fingers, "fourteen volunteers I've sent all fucked off to live the good life instead of completing their quests... and I mean, who could blame them, my church sucks..."

She takes a breath.

"And also you will work to repair the damage they've done to society. To help you accomplish this, I am allowed to grant you one boon: any one object you wish to possess, I can give you."

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He opens his mouth to answer, pauses, closes it again.

"I apologize if this is a rude question, but what is the definition of an object here, exactly? Is knowledge an object? What about people or animals? Planets? Concepts?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It has to fit through the portal, which is about three meters in diameter. Knowledge is not an object but you can ask for a magic book that contains the knowledge and is also telepathically readable so you can skip learning it the slow way, if that's your thing."

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"...Are there limitations on the kind of magic I can define into existence that way? I assume there must be or someone would already have... no, wait, I forgot what people are like. Are there?"

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"Only in the sense that it has to have both discreet computational requirements and discreet energy requirements not exceeding the flashpoint of thermonuclear fusion or the singularity point for bounded materialism. You cannot metaphorically wish for more wishes."

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"How long do I have to think this over—" He shifts his weight as though about to start pacing, then stops and shakes his head. "No, wait, I'm getting distracted. If I brought you, would you be able to give me ongoing help in a way that a cleverly designed magic item couldn't—and would it solve your, um," he makes a vague and mildly embarrassed hand gesture, "problem?"

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"It would solve several of my problems," she says emphatically. "Yes, you are technically allowed to pick me as your 'object' and while this would bind me to you, kinky by the way, it would also let me kick my church in the ass with my own damn foot GRANTED."

There is a moment of silence.

Coventina glares up into the void. "OH COME ON!"

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"...what's wrong...?"

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"Never demonstrate competence at a job you hate. Can you say that again, more emphatically, please?"

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"Ah... if I do that will I immediately be launched into a foreign world with very little idea of where I am or what I'm supposed to be doing? I don't mean to be obstructive, I'm just—very low on context right now—"

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"I'm just saying, if you want me as your 'object', you're gonna have to insist. Apparently. You don't have to pick me," she says, pained.

"So, the place I'd be sending us is called Axel. It is a walled city in a fertile valley where many adventurers get their start. My church has a minimal presence, the adventurer's guild isn't corrupt, and the economy is healthy. They don't have electricity but they do have indoor plumbing, with magic somewhat making up for lack of technology in that and other areas. That sort of context?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes, thank you, that's very helpful. Um—I think most of the rest of what I want to know before I finalize anything is what if any choices I need to make about video game mechanics before I show up, and what if any obvious social pitfalls I might run into in my first five minutes in a new universe that would be good to be warned about ahead of time?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"The video game mechanics are handled in-world by advanced magitech. They won't affect you until you get your adventurer's card. I didn't actually bake stats and levels into the fabric of reality; give baby-me some credit here," she says teasingly. "Anyway, as for social pitfalls, your basic concept of politeness ought to transfer. Axel in particular is culturally... loose, so you should be fine on that score."

Permalink Mark Unread

"All right. In that case—"

He takes a deep breath and straightens up slightly, clasping his hands together in front of him.

"I choose you as my object."

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A beat of silence.

Coventina slowly cranes her neck upwards, her glare deadly.

"...very well," a voice sighs. A large magic glyph appears in the void, a winged figure haloed within. "They're going to make me cover for you while you're gone, you know."

"Thank you," Coventina says, hopping off her throne.

Another large magic circle spools out across the floor, filling the illuminated space under her and Laurent's feet. Gravity lifts away, as the two of them start floating upwards.

Permalink Mark Unread

Laurent is standing on a cobblestone street. Coventina is next to him. Houses and shops with shingled roofs surround them. People in armor or hand-made clothing or the occasional fancy dress stroll by.

It's mid-morning and the weather is fine.

Permalink Mark Unread

The first thing he does is glance down to see if he's still wearing jeans and a hoodie. If so, he should maybe do something about that. Perhaps not as his first priority, though. His first priority should probably be figuring out what he is going to eat today and where he is going to sleep tonight. And whether Coventina is going to immediately run off and abandon him—and what exactly her being bound to him entails—

 

He's just sort of standing there blinking down at his own feet.

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Coventina takes a long breath of the fresh air, and starts to mention that she thinks the adventurer's guild is that way...

It hits all at once. Flesh and soul reunited, all the little signals and urges that are zeroed out in the divine realm finish making their way through the brain and suddenly sensory input has affect again. It hits Laurent too, maybe not nearly as hard, but he was still conscious as a disembodied soul and now he is also no longer disembodied.

Coventina is still wearing her divine regalia. Her hands fly up to her exposed tits, and she spends barely half a second mauling herself before she falls to her knees, shuddering through a small orgasm as she drips on the cobbles.

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A passing woman in a fancy dress gasps in disgust and turns away.

A pair of passing dudebros stop to stare, one slack-jawed, the other grinning and pointing and giving Laurent an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

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...ah. Yes. Right. That... makes perfect sense and he should have thought of it ahead of time and he didn't and now here he is in the bed he made. So to speak.

"Coventina," he says tentatively, "should we... go somewhere that is not the middle of the street...?"

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She makes a small, very lewd noise.

Then she takes a breath and pops back up to her feet, once more in control of herself. "Sorry. I'm good."

She looks around. "Pretty sure I recognize this street. The adventurer's guild is this way." She points. "Shall we?"

Permalink Mark Unread

Oh good that is much better than several other possible ways this situation could have developed.

"Yes, let's."

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Coventina's outfit draws a lot of attention, and that attention runs the full spectrum. This dude walks straight into a wall. This gawping teen walks straight into this older dude who's glowering in disapproval. This random girl with a staff winks and tosses Coventina a coin. This dude stops in his tracks and starts walking backwards instead so he can appreciate the view. This dude doesn't stop as he stares and trips into a decorative shrub.

The adventurer's guild sits at the end of a cul-de-sac, large and imposing, white brick and red roof tiles.

Inside, it is full of rowdy men and woman enjoying meals or bragging about their quests. An open floorplan filled with bench-and-table seating, under an exposed-rafters ceiling from which various adventuring trophies hang. There is a bar with drinks, another bar with food, and a long, much fancier counter stretching across the back wall that wouldn't look out of place in a 20th-century bank.

They get some interested looks as they walk in, but Coventina in particular gets less extreme reactions than she got outside, given that maybe two-thirds of the female adventurers are in bikini armor or something even more revealing, and at least half of the male adventurers are likewise in barbarian loincloths or other similarly minimal amounts of coverage. She still gets plenty of appreciative leers but a few of those looks are a little more impressed and curious than lustful.

Permalink Mark Unread

Oh, good, nobody is paying him the slightest attention because his traveling companion is much more visually interesting. That's just how he likes it.

He's a little nervous that letting Coventina take the lead in interfacing with the adventurer's guild will lead to interesting times, but since he barely has any idea what the hell he's doing, it seems he will end up ceding that role to her by default.

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Coventina takes the lead as far as the big fancy bank-counter.

At the counter, she tugs him forward and says to the woman behind the golden bars, "Hi. We'd like to register as adventurers."

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"Of course, sir, ma'am," the woman behind the counter says politely. She's blonde, has huge boobs, and her shirt stops at her armpits, and yet something about the cut of her clothing still exudes professionalism, especially in contrast to some of the adventurers behind them. "The fee is five-hundred Lake each."

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Coventina very calmly sets the coin she caught earlier on the counter. The only money either of them have. She'd totally forgotten there was a fee. Thank you, random stranger.

"Here you go. Laurent, why don't you go first."

Permalink Mark Unread

"All right," he says, with a friendly smile for the lady behind the counter. "I've never registered as an adventurer before, so you might have to walk me through the details." It's weirdly freeing to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that your impostor syndrome is absolutely correct.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, don't worry. All I need is your name, and for you to place your hand in this device here," she says, setting some kind of arcane contraption on the counter-top. "It will scan you to calibrate your stats and then incarnate those stats in the form of a card. The card will show you your status and provide an interface for spending the points you earn when you level up."

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"My name is Laurent." Hopefully this won't be the sort of universe where telling people your real name is a bad idea. He should've thought to ask. He tentatively puts his hand in the contraption.

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The counter-lady nods. Not everyone has a surname, after all. She writes it down on a slip of paper and feeds it into the device.

The device rattles and whirrs and shines what looks like laser-light over Laurent's hand.

Then it dings and spits out a card.

LAURENT
Level 0

CLASS: ~CHOOSE CLASS~

Stat Points: 0

Fitness - 9
Ardor - 8
Grace - 14
Moxie - 12
Sanity - 16
Allure - 11


Skill Points: 0

-

ELEMENTS: Storm - 12% Affinity

The card is divided into three sections. Stats. Skills. And Elements. The skills section has fields for text, but is currently blank. The elements section is a sort of node-diagram with connected symbols, grayed out. Above that, across the top of the card, is his name and class and level.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ah. Thank you." He collects the card. He's going to have to get Coventina to explain so many things to him. Also he's going to end up putting such an unreasonable amount of effort into making sure he is never parted from this card.

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"If you lose the card, we can print you a new one at no charge. But try not to lose it! The card will only record your progress while you're carrying it with you, so if you forget to take it with you, you won't level up! Oh! I see your stats are quite good. Four of them are already above ten, which gives you access to quite a few classes!"

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"That sounds useful!"

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The counter-lady's polite smile turns a little more genuine. "Indeed. If you have any further questions please don't hesitate to ask. Feel free to ask for 'Luna' if you should need to find me later, okay?"

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"I'll remember that. Thank you very much, Luna."

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There are interested murmurs among those watching Laurent, and casual speculation on what class he'll pick.

Meanwhile, Luna sets the device in front of Coventina. After writing her name down and feeding it in,

("Oh, like the goddess?" "Yes, like the goddess.")

Coventina puts her hand in the device and gets a card of her own.

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Coventina snatches the card before Luna can get a good look at her stats, then thanks Luna and turns to Laurent.

"My divine portfolio is suited to healing, so I'm gonna be your healslut unless you've got a better idea."

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"Maybe I'll have ideas once I understand the class system better. For now, it seems I'll just have to trust you."

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"I mean, if you want to leave everything up to me... but your class is kind of a big decision. A big personal decision, arguably not one that should be made for strategic reasons. Luna probably has a pamphlet back there; you could ask for one."

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He turns back to Luna. "I would like a pamphlet on the class system if you've got one handy!"

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Luna happily hands one over.

Warrior
Stat Alignment: Fitness / Ardor
A physical fighter who focuses on melee weapons and overwhelming damage.

Ranger
Stat Alignment: Grace / Ardor
A physical fighter who focuses on ranged weapons and precision, with bonuses to taming monsters.

Mage
Stat Alignment: Sanity / Ardor
A brute-force spellcaster focused on destructive force from long range, with bonuses to casting speed.

Monk
Stat Alignment: Fitness / Moxie
A physical fighter who focuses on martial arts and overwhelming speed.

Rogue
Stat Alignment: Grace / Moxie
An agile fighter with bonuses to stealth.

Druid
Stat Alignment: Sanity / Moxie
A balanced spellcaster focused on terrain control and utility magic, with bonuses to enduring hostile environments.

Shaman
Stat Alignment: Fitness / Allure
A melee spellcaster focused on enhancement and impairment magic with bonuses against other magic. 

Warlock
Stat Alignment: Grace / Allure
A balanced spellcaster focused on control and illusions, with bonuses to summoning.

Cleric
Stat Alignment: Sanity / Allure
A brute-force spellcaster focused on healing and restoration at close range, and battlefield support at long range.

No Class - Adventurer
Stat Alignment: None

The gist is thus: Each class gains a special bonus from two of the six stats. To unlock a class, he has to have at least one of those stats above 10, so Warrior is the only class he doesn't have access to. Adventurer, unlike the rest, has no requirements and no stat bonuses.

The first nine classes come with a free level-up to level 1, as well as two free stat points, one free skill point, and auto-unlocks a sequence of core class Skills.

The Adventurer class gets none of those benefits, but does have the unique ability to unlock any skill that is performed in front of them. For the other nine classes, unlocking a skill requires already having purchased the prerequisite skill as well as having some inkling of how to perform a skill without system assistance.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, that's fascinating!" he says, reading through this. "Is adventurer a popular class? I suppose the implicit level penalty is nobody's friend, but I must admit I'm drawn to the skill mimicry aspect..."

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"I see," Luna says. "Truthfully, choosing Adventurer is quite unpopular. The lack of starting bonus and the lack of class-specific stat bonuses turns most new adventurers off of the option, actually. But some people make it work."

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"But you see," he says, "if I picked any other class, I'd keep encountering skills I couldn't pick up myself, and that sounds terrible."

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Giggle.

"Go with your heart, Laurent. You don't need those starting bonuses anyway. You've got me."

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"Well, if you insist."

Does this card permit him to select the Adventurer class? Is it obvious how to do so?

Permalink Mark Unread

Tapping "~CHOSE CLASS~" with his finger brings up the list. And then touching "No Class" for three full seconds selects that and locks it in. The text under "Level 0" on his card changes.

CLASS: "Adventurer"
Class Bonus: Skill Observation - Witnessing any skill in action will unlock that skill for purchase.

Permalink Mark Unread

Pretty straightforward!

"And now I'm an Adventurer."

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"Congratulations! If you'd like to get started right away, the bounty board is over there, next to the bar."

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"Thank you!"

He inspects the board.

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There are quests posted!

Most of them have a level requirement of 2 or higher.

In fact, all of the quests have a level requirement of 2 or higher.

There are some menial odd jobs listed that don't have a level requirement though.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, that's ignominious."

Coventina steps up beside him, looking down at her card. "Gonna pick my class now unless you have something to say about that. I am your 'cheat item' after all."

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"I think the thing that I have to say about that is 'go with your heart'."

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Giggle.

Coventina pokes at her card for a bit, then shows it to him with a grin.

COVENTINA
Level 1

CLASS: "Cleric"
Class Bonus: Sanity - Your sanity stat increases the range of your ranged spells.
Class Bonus: Allure - Your allure stat increases the potency of your spells.

Stat Points: 2

Fitness - 14
Ardor - 19
Grace - 14
Moxie - 15
Sanity - 16
Allure - 20

Skill Points: 0

"Nectar of Sin" (Passive)
Your bodily fluids are a powerful restorative.

"Vital Rush" (Instant, Single-Target, Line-of-Sight)
Causes all damage-over-time or heal-over-time effects on the target to expend themselves immediately for the full damage or healing amount.

"Flesh for Flesh" (Instant, Single-Target, Touch)
Exchange your current health value and physical wounds with the target's.

ELEMENTS: Water - 100% Affinity | Flesh - 89% Affinity | Spirit - 32% Affinity

Permalink Mark Unread

"Congratulations. Should we look into the odd jobs, do you think, or are there better uses for our time?"

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Coventina puts her card away and peers at the board.

"So," she says in slightly apologetic tones, "we have exactly zero money. Which means we can't buy you a weapon or pay for a room or anything. So. That's kind of urgent. But, getting you your first skill point is also kind of urgent. I'm willing to follow your lead."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hmm. My top priority is being sure of food, water, and shelter for the immediate future, I think. Equipment and magic come second unless it starts to look like equipment and magic get me closer to having a roof over my head tonight."

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"The smallest payout for a quest listed here is twenty times the biggest payout among the odd jobs," Coventina notes.

She doesn't bother to mention that she technically has food and water handled. Or, her breasts do, anyway. She has enough of a read on Laurent to know this wouldn't particularly appeal to him and also its been centuries since she's tasted anything and she wants real food too.

"You could try to pimp me out," she mentions wryly. She'd be remiss if she didn't bring up the option, but inwardly she's actually a little embarrassed at the idea. She's newly incarnated and climaxed just from grabbing her own boobs; she is less than confident in her current ability to be the best fuck of a guy's life. Which is objectively an unnecessarily high standard, she recognizes, but still.

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"I mean, if you wanted to try that, I certainly wouldn't stop you, but I don't know that I have anything to contribute to the enterprise. Supposing that we don't, though, then we're left with the question of whether it's faster to achieve basic security of immediate material needs by doing a bunch of odd jobs right away, or by trying to scrounge just enough cash for a weapon and then—I don't actually know what to do to get my first skill point, to be honest."

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"I'm just trying to respect the thing where I technically belong to you now," she teases him.

"Probably I can keep you alive if we go up against some of these even if we fuck up badly, but actually completing the quest... we might just end up spending all day running away with nothing to show for it afterward."

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"It did occur to me, reading the list of your skills, that losing a battle against a single opponent isn't necessarily a showstopper if you can just tap them gently on the nose and give them all your wounds. I assume it's more complicated than that in practice."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, if I use Flesh for Flesh on someone who is already wounded, I receive those wounds, but other than the logistics implied by that, it is just about that simple, I think. I have enough Flesh affinity that I could probably cast that spell a hundred times before I started to get tired."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Then, concept: we fight someone or something that doesn't have any friends and is wildly out of our reach by normal means, let it beat you within an inch of your life nearly unopposed, give it all your wounds and then kill it. —if you object to this plan because it would hurt a lot, we can come up with a better plan. Actually given how new you are to sensation in general I might insist you try out a small-scale injury first to make sure you won't be incapacitated. Actually it might be a better idea to acquire the wounds under controlled circumstances... I don't know, what do you think?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm not into pain and my... newness, is a concern. I might end up too incapacitated to cast. It's not a bad plan otherwise, though. I could transfer wounds from you to the enemy if I can touch both of you at once... but if money is the objective I'm sure you'd rather hang a for-sale sign on my pussy than be horribly maimed. And if stat points are your objective, then the plan is suboptimal because you get way more experience points for banishing monsters than killing them."

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"Banishing?"

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"Oh right, you wouldn't know."

Lecture pose.

"Monsters, the kind that give you experience points anyway, are a sort of byproduct of the symbiosis between wild magic and biology. They are essentially wild magic getting confused and mimicking something alive. Killing a monster unbinds the wild magic and some of that power feeds into you through your adventurer card. And some monsters can only be dealt with that way because they don't have sex organs. But wild magic is very sensitive to reproductive potential, so most monsters shape themselves for it unconsciously. Every monster has a core of crystalized mana. If you manage to crack the core while the monster is still alive, the mana will stream out and leap toward the nearest human like lines of force into a magnet. Nearest or whoever has the highest Ardor anyway. And the mana will form a circuit with the human and drive the monster into a lustful frienzy. If you're up to the task, you can just let it fuck you, closing the circuit, and it will cum itself to death, which leaves you with all of the wild magic converted into experience points."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...that sounds... hmm. Like it calls for strategizing best done in private, I think. Which means a hotel room of some description which means money which means some combination of odd jobs, prostitution, and the Flesh for Flesh hack. I'm fairly sure you're happier about prostitution than I am about being horribly maimed but if I abstract away the safety concerns I'm not actually completely sure of it, so I think I'll leave that question up to you."

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"I'm totally cool with the prostitution option," she says. "I mean, the newness-ness is kind of a concern there too, but, like, only in the sense that it kinda dings my pride to charge someone for the experience of watching me cum my brains out and pass out without contributing on purpose to their satisfaction. That might just be me being weird. I'm sure you could find someone who'd be interested even while I'm so off my game. I should put my free stat points into Moxie. That should help. Unless you want to drag me out back and fuck me up against the wall until I can stay coherent with a dick in me."

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"...I'd consider it, if we had a hotel room, which leaves us back at square one again. How cheap are hotel rooms? We could do odd jobs or the maiming hack to get a hotel room to get you into a state where you can sell sex without any harm to your pride?"

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"My pride will survive if you don't wanna. I mean, they barely have porn in this world. And actually getting to touch the girl while you watch her cum her brains out is worth a lot objectively even if it seems like a heartbreakingly low standard to me. Probably if you asked around you'd get mobbed."

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"I'd hate to ask you to practice your craft to a lower standard than you prefer! That would be—well, if I was the one who had to do something I'm good at badly in public, I'd look into getting maimed first."

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Coventina laughs. "Well, its not zero tempting. But between slight embarrassment and agonizing maiming, being live porn wins hands down."

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"Fair enough."

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With a plan in hand, Laurent finds that if anything Coventina was underestimating her appeal. As soon as he starts paying attention, he can overhear multiple adventurers already speculating licentiously about her and her lewd regalia. Probably all he would have to do is name a price.

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"Were you serious about involving me?" he asks her. "It's not that I exactly object, it's just I genuinely don't know whether we gain any practical benefit that way. And I don't know how."

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"Trying to respect the thing where I'm your cheat item," she reminds him in flirtatious tones.

"If you'd rather not be involved at all, I can handle it myself. I guess it depends what kind of first impression you want to make on your fellow adventurers."

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"I think I want to make the kind of first impression where everyone is paying much more attention to you than to me."

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Aw. That's kinda cute.

"Fair." She takes a bracing breath. "Wait here then, I guess."

 

Coventina goes over toward whichever clump of adventurers is talking about her in the most complementary ways, and introduces herself. It takes her about twenty seconds before she's sitting on a bare-chested warrior's lap while his girlfriend fondles the goddess' breasts. It takes about five minutes before the couple is shoving a bag of coins into Coventina's hands and dragging her, flushed and giggling unsteadily, out of the hall.

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He steps out after them, not intending to follow them as far as a private space if they make it all the way to one, but wanting to be sure he doesn't lose track of where they've gone.

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There's an inn at the end of the block. It's not quite in sight of the guild hall but it's close. The couple half-carries the moaning and giggling goddess into the modest townhouse-ish inn.

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It's good that she's having fun. He can wait by the guild hall until she comes back.

Actually, on second thought, he's thought of a question for Luna that doesn't immediately reveal that he arrived in this universe half an hour ago. He goes back inside.

"Excuse me, do you have another pamphlet explaining what each of the stats is all about?"

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"I do indeed. Here!"

She hands over a laminated sheet.

FITNESS
Improves physical strength, physical stamina, and body-shape. Reduces physical damage taken.

ARDOR
Increases overall sex drive, speed of arousal, responsiveness to stimulation, and reduces recovery times. Amplifies the pleasure caused by sexual techniques.

GRACE
Improves reflex speed, physical precision, hand-eye coordination, and sense of balance. Improves muscle memory and reduces the effects of startlement and flinch.

MOXIE
Reduces overall squick reflex, increases pain tolerance, and lowers unendorsed inhibitions. Improves control of body and ability to cast without incantation or gesture.

SANITY
Improves reasoning, intuition, and mental alertness. Reduces the effects of all forms of intoxication, natural, artificial, and magical. Increases working memory, imagination fidelity, and attention span. Increases magical stamina.

ALLURE
Amplifies all behavioral and non-fitness aspects of attractiveness. Increases overall perception and empathy. Amplifies all mind-affecting skills.

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He reads this over, and then reads it over again, and then compares it to his card and his memory of the goddess's, and then reads it over a third time. Interesting stuff. He thinks he knows where all his stat points are going for the foreseeable future. Unless there's a cap, he supposes, in which case when he maxes out Sanity he'll have to decide which one comes second.

"What other useful pamphlets are there that I haven't thought to ask for?"

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There is a specific pamphlet about each of the nine classes, but not one for him.

There is a more general pamphlet about common skills and what stats they require to purchase. Requirements for unlocking a skill and requirements for purchasing a skill do not seem to overlap. Most skills require one of your stats to be above a certain number before you can purchase the skill. Apparently, you can also purchase the same skill multiple times to make it more powerful, but this is usually considered an inefficient use of skill points.

There is an explanation of elemental affinities, which boils down to spells of that element making you less tired by the percentage of your affinity. Perfect affinities are extremely rare, so Coventina's 100% Water affinity is probably because she's a goddess. 100% Affinity allows one to cast spells of that element for free.

There is also a pamphlet on basic wilderness survival, and one which seems to be full of advertisements for blacksmiths and leatherworkers and alchemists.

Laurent has time to read them all. Coventina does not reappear promptly.

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It's a good thing he has pockets to keep all this stuff in.

Are there clocks around? If he can track time closely, he's going to look for her after an hour and a half. If he can't, he's going to read through all the pamphlets again trying to familiarize himself with details, and possibly asking questions of Luna if the pamphlets don't answer them—things like "can elemental affinities be increased, and if so how" and "can I unlock skills in any way other than seeing them used, or is that what I get for picking the jack-of-all-trades class"—and then, if she still hasn't appeared by the end of that investigation, he'll go poke his nose into that inn down the street.

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There's an hourglass in the guild hall. There's a sundial outside.

Elemental affinities are approximately what the wild magic thinks of your personality. This is too simplistic an explanation to be strictly true, but yes, one can increase or change their elemental affinities through various interactions with said elements, but no one knows how to do it reliably. Gaining a basic understanding, on his own, of how to do something will unlock a skill for him, same as for the other classes.

When he pokes his nose into that inn down the street, he is easily able to locate a closed door from which sex sounds are faintly emanating.

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Okay, as long as she's still having fun and has not e.g. been kidnapped, he can leave her to it and go back to memorizing and analyzing available information about the magic system. He wishes he still had access to modern technology; he'd be making so many spreadsheets.

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If asked, Luna has blank spreadsheets. On paper. But they're slightly expensive and Laurent still doesn't have any money, because Coventina still isn't back yet.

 

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He spends a little while debating with himself whether the spreadsheets are a worthwhile expense, ultimately decides they aren't, paces the street in front of the guild hall for a bit, observes that he's getting hungry, and checks the list of odd jobs to see if there's anything that looks quick and straightforward enough that he could feasibly do it, get paid, buy food, eat the food, and by that point hopefully Coventina will have finished if she's ever going to.

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The highest paying odd job is for breaking down a section of damaged city wall so they can rebuild. It involves swinging a pickaxe at hard stone for six hours. The next best payout is for sawing away a fallen roof near the city wall so they can rebuild. The one after that is for dragging a carriage that lost its wheels ten blocks from this spot to this spot.

Pretty much the only listed job that doesn't require high Fitness is this shady-looking ad for an alchemical test subject. Nothing interesting either. They want to test a baldness-cure.

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He wonders idly if he'll get free stat points if he starts working out. ...then he wonders less-idly which of the Fitness-requiring jobs can be accomplished substituting grim determination for Fitness, which is probably not the optimal way to start working out but will at least definitely get him over the hurdle of not conceptualizing himself as the sort of person who does that sort of thing... and, after all, he does have access to a powerful restorative, or will once he extracts her from that hotel room...

He takes another look at the list of odd jobs with that in mind.

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On closer examination, the roof-sawing job has a little doodle of a girl with a staff surrounded by snow-flakes, and a scribbled line of text that reads, [Free Chilled Water Every Hour!]

It pays 15 Lake an hour.

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You know what, he'll take it. Off to the roof-sawing job he goes.

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He is surrounded by burly guys wielding saws!

The cute ice mage almost freezes his hand because she is so busy watching the sweaty, bare-chested, burly guys work that she's not paying attention to the water barrel!

After four hours, he has earned a single 50-Lake coin. Which is enough to buy the cheapest meal on the menu at the guild hall.

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That absolutely counts as succeeding at his goals! He takes his 50-Lake coin to the guild hall and buys food and eats the food.

Okay. Now he is going to check on Coventina again, and if she still isn't done, he is going to knock on the door as politely as he can manage. And if it turns out he has the wrong door, he is going to focus on the fact that the goddess is missing so as to ignore the crushing weight of social anxiety.

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The sex sounds do seem to pause when he knocks.

After a few moments, the door opens to reveal a naked, sweat-drenched and glistening Coventina with blissful half-lidded eyes. She smiles at Laurent, then blinks, noticing the sweat-stains on his own clothes. Then she glances at the window.

"How long were we fucking?" she asks.

The naked couple sprawled exhaustedly across the bed giggles at each other and shrugs.

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"About six hours. I didn't want to interrupt, but I do want to get us a room before tonight."

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Coventina lets out a delighted little incredulous laugh.

"Six hours!"

She turns to the couple.

"I think you owe me a bonus."

They both nod languidly and agree, giggling to each other again.

 

In the end, Coventina leaves with 45,000 Lake and a new outfit: A green bikini top and a pair of black leather booty-shorts. "I am way too relaxed to struggle back into my regalia right now."

As they leave the inn, her stomach growls like its dying. "Holy fuck, I'm hungry. Holy fuck, I'm hungry! Foooooooooood!"

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"Let's get you fed and then find somewhere to stay the night which will hopefully also double as a place to privately discuss strategy?"

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"Sure sure." She divides the money she got in half and gives half to Laurent. She wouldn't be a very good cheat item if she kept it all for herself.

Coventina ambles into the guild hall and orders a large, hearty meal.

She reacts to the first bite quite similarly to how she reacted to grabbing her tits the first time. It's been two-hundred years since she's been hungry or been able to enjoy the taste of things. She moans loudly.

Eventually her food stops being the entirety of her focus.

"So," she says, chewing. "It turns out that Nectar of Sin and Flesh for Flesh synergize really well. Since, y'know, anyone I'm fucking is basically bathing in divine-quality healing potion..."

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"I see. That does explain some things."

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"Doesn't it just."

Coventina finishes her meal and lets out a very satisfied sigh.

"Any preferences about where we stay? We can afford a decent room now, and have plenty left over to get you armed and armored."

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"In that case we might as well indulge. I bet you'll make such delightful noises if we get a room with really nice bedsheets."

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She grins at him approvingly.

"Alright. Let's go find a place."

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If they're willing to put up with a bit of a walk to reach the guild hall, they can find an inn offering clean, two-room apartments with ensuite bathroom and pantry for 3,000 Lake a night.

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That seems within budget given Coventina's demonstrated income potential. "Let's take it. For tonight, to start with, and we can keep coming back if we like the place."

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"Sure."

 

After checking in, the room they end up in is actually pretty nice, even by modern standards. Table and chairs in one room, with stands for armor and weapons and cabinets for other adventuring paraphernalia. Large, luxurious bed in the other room with plenty of pillows. The bathroom lacks a recognizable shower, but it has hot and cold running water and a large stone tub.

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"...all right, I like the place. How are the bedsheets?"

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Poke poke. "Feels pretty nice, I think."

At the moment, she's more interested in the bathroom, though, and heads straight in once she's poked the bed. "I think we could both use baths. Wanna share?"

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"As long as you're all right with talking strategy in the bath."

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Giggle. "Sure, why not."

She flips the hot water lever and strips out of her new outfit without preamble, and starts searching for soap and stuff. The room does seem to come stocked with some.

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Laurent also gets out of his clothes and into the bath. He's not particularly self-conscious about his body, at least not in any obvious way, but he's also not particularly flirtatious.

"I want to hear about the design principles that went into this world," he says as he helps her find the soap. "Did I correctly pick up on the implication that you designed it all yourself?"

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Coventina sinks into the water and slips down until her head is resting on the molded edge. The bath is wider than it is long, so they're sitting sideways relative to the flow of water, which is coming out of a wide slot rather than a round spigot, and the tub is just large enough that, facing each other and stretched out, their legs meet at the shins. She idly notes how visibly aroused Laurent is, but doesn't act on it either way.

"I didn't design it all myself," she says. "I only did the magic system. And," she winces a little, "I kind of half-assed it? Like, the underlying thaumophysics is mostly a straight copy of another world that I barely tweaked, and the class and skill system I just outright stole. The only thing I actually came up with myself was the adventurer card stat-spread."

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(Visible arousal levels are negligible.)

"I quite like the stats," he says with a slight smile. "An interesting set of attributes to pay attention to. Do the numbers go up on their own as we get better at things? I had occasion to wonder that while I was looking into working for my lunch."

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"The numbers track your actual state, so yes. But it's impossible to exceed a value of twenty without spending stat points or actually being superhuman. And if you're already above ten, then leveling up will be faster than training. Also only some of the stats respond to training at all. Fitness, for example, is the most responsive to training, but like, aerobic endurance or muscle size are only small parts of it, and the number takes the average across the whole domain."

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"Yes, Fitness was also the one I was thinking of. I'd like to have a little more of it but it's a fairly low priority for stat points because stat points are capable of doing much more important things for me."

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"Well, that really depends on which skills you end up wanting. Without a class bonus that's really the only incentive with regard to the system. Speaking of which, what did you get up to while I was busy? When I told you to wait there I thought I'd be done in like forty-five minutes, not six hours."

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"I read a lot of pamphlets. And spent four hours earning 50 Lake to buy lunch with."

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"Sorry."

She chuckles.

"Well, tomorrow, my suggestion is to wander around and let you spy on as many adventurers as we can, to unlock for you as wide a selection of skills as we can."

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"Good plan. And don't worry about it. I'm not at all upset."

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Smile.

Okay, soap and stuff. Actual cleaning up. It's been so long she doesn't even have muscle memory for it, but it's not like it's complicated. Does Laurent want her to wash him too? She can totally do that in her capacity as his cheat item.

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Actually, he washes himself first and then notices that she appears to be as new to soap as she is to other aspects of having a body and asks, "Do you need any help?"

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"Nope! But if you wanna put your hands all over me anyway, that's cool."

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"I will admit the notion does have some appeal. But I'm not sure I know you well enough yet."

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"Dude, most of my me is between my legs. You're gonna have a hard time getting to know me if you never touch me."

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He makes a thoughtful humming sound and takes a moment to collect his thoughts.

 

"...if I'm working toward some practical purpose, then the question I have to answer is 'am I accomplishing my goal', and that's simple. As soon as the question turns to what I want, what I enjoy—that's an intimacy not to be undertaken lightly. I expect we can make something work, but that's why I've been hesitant about some things." Wry smile. "In retrospect I wish I'd taken you up on your offer to fuck you while you were still nearly incapable of processing physical sensations, but I would've hated doing it in public and we didn't have the money to get a room yet, so..." Shrug. "Here we are in the world we live in. I'm sure we'll manage."

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She sits up in the bath and leans forward, putting a hand on his thigh.

She's glad she got caught in a feedback loop with her Cleric skills and spent six hours taking the edge off her two-century dry spell or else she'd probably be annoyed with him and that's not what he needs right now.

"I'm not any less capable of enjoying sex now than I was this morning," she clarifies first, "staying lucid means there's more of me to enjoy it, you know? If you wish you'd fucked me, then fuck me. The deal was that I belong to you and I'm trying to take that seriously, and not just because it's appealingly kinky. It is true that intimacy shouldn't be taken lightly, but the first and most important thing you'll have to learn about me is that the real me is the me that's always first going to want to know, who are you when you're horny? Because that's who I am. My way of relating to the world and to other people is intrinsically sexual. It always has been and always will be. Two-hundred years without a libido didn't change that, and if it did that would be like dying, because the leftovers wouldn't be me."

Coventina tones down the intensity and adds, jokingly, "If you don't trust me enough to enjoy fucking me, that's one thing, but if we're gonna be friends, friends don't let friends misapply intimacy heuristics."

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"Oh, I know you're not any less capable of enjoying sex, but you're more capable of—perceiving me while you're at it, you see. I would like to be friends with you. And if you say that you experience friendship primarily through sex, well, I don't have any reason to doubt you. But—it's not just sex, to be clear, it's just that sex is where it's coming up—I also don't, for example, eat food for pleasure in front of anyone I don't trust. I don't... hmm, how to explain..."

He tilts his head thoughtfully, searching for words.

"...if I don't trust someone, I don't want them to see me existing on my own terms and doing enjoyable things for enjoyment's sake. It takes a lot of... feeling like I understand someone, or like I want to be closer to them... before I'm willing to—have authentic desires in front of them, show them a face I'm not optimizing for the public view. That's also why I was fine talking about strategic maiming in the middle of the guildhall but drew the line at in-depth discussion of what kind of monster I might be willing to fuck."

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"As curious as I am about what kind of monster you'd be willing to fuck, I know there are no shortcuts to trust," she sighs. She gives him a rueful grin, leaning back in the water again. "I wasn't actually expecting a coherent objection. How cool of you. See, we know each other better already."

Thoughtfully, "You are totally allowed to molest me in my sleep, if that helps. I sleep pretty deeply. Or at least I did last time I was on a material plane. Or if you wanted to get creative about your discomfort-with-being-perceived some other way, like, if I have sexual boundaries I've never found them. Just saying."

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"I was actually thinking that talking about what kind of monster I should be aiming to banish might be a good getting-to-know-you activity. It's... on the spectrum between acquaintanceship and intimacy... for both of us, it seems. ...as for molesting you in your sleep, we'll see. I'm not sure that quite counts as getting to know each other, but if you'd like it..."

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"No, I'd have to be awake for getting-to-know-each-other. Just, if you get the urge to touch me or use my body to get yourself off, I don't like the idea of you then deciding you shouldn't, when there's no reason you shouldn't."

Coventina starts rinsing her hair.

"Monsters can be lots of different things but most of them follow a few themes. There's the ones that crudely try to imitate the human form, the ones that basically go all in on being made of tentacles, the ones that are basically genital-seeking missiles with either a hole or a phallus and not much else, the ones that disguise themselves as trees or rocks or mushrooms or whatever and go for envelopment with or without tentacles. And also slimes."

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"Optimizing for practicality rather than fun at least to start with, I should probably go for whatever's easiest to crack... although since I have access to you I don't need to worry about geting hurt in the process as long as I'm not outright dead by the end of it... tentacles sound dicey, though, I can't quite decide whether I'd end up having too much fun or the exact opposite of that but I get the feeling it would be one of those. Should probably stick to less exciting targets until I know you well enough that I won't mind the risk of having either a very good time or a very bad one in front of you. Relatedly, what's the deal with slimes?"

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"Same as the rest. They're sexually attracted to human mana and can be banished. Or do you mean, like, varieties. Slimes come in a lot of aesthetics depending on what's inspiring the wild magic to spawn them but they're mostly all the same functionally, y'know, just a motile blob of aphrodisiac goo. A slime would be perfect for you, actually, but for that exact reason they're really rare. They're basically a free level-up for beginner adventurers since they're one of the few monsters that are easier to banish than kill, so when one shows up it doesn't last long."

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"I see. That's unfortunate. So—hmm, when you say genital-seeking missiles, does that imply monsters that don't need to be cracked before they can be banished, or...? Do some monsters sexually assault people while they still have intact mana cores?"

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"Depends on the monster. They're all sexually attracted to human mana but they can have other drives based on whatever their inspiratory source is. But no, you can't banish a monster without cracking the mana core. Sex with an intact-core monster will still create a circuit of mana but instead of draining the mana into you it drains your mana into the monster, which by itself isn't that big a deal; the drain is much slower than the other direction, but if you orgasm while your mana's flowing in that circuit the wild magic will kind of jam up in your body and paralyze you. How long the paralysis lasts depends on how exhausted your mana is, from stopping as soon as the orgasm does, to persisting for hours afterward. And if you run completely out of mana you end up paralyzed anyway, for the same reason: your personal mana is kind of like... like your gut flora. Humans have incorporated magic into their bodies and cultivated it the same way they've incorporated microorganisms, as a sort of pseudo-symbiotic protective measure against the environment. Anyway, most monsters don't take advantage of this on purpose but some do."

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"...I hate to put you on the spot, but I have to ask: did you have design input into the monsters?"

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Smirk. "Nope."

 

"No one did, they're an emergent consequence of the thaumophysics and the existence of the Ardor stat. But I was hoping for and expecting something lewd to emerge thus, so."

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"I sort of wish you'd managed to make something less hazardous but I suppose it was your first time designing a universe and this is better than many possible outcomes. Hmm, what other questions do I have... What exactly happened to your church?"

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Coventina's expression sours as she rubs at her face with her hand.

"It's complicated."

She sighs. "You know how people have this obnoxious tendency to treat the superficial aspects of a thing as if they are that thing? Well, a superficial aspect of my religion was that followers act slutty and say being prude is bad. So of course my church started attracting useless apes who insist on completely missing the point, which was to free people to have all the sex they desired deep down, and instead became a shallow pack of rapist assholes who've been scaring people away from their slut pride for decades now."

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"...oh, dear... yes, I can see how that could be a problem. I'm sorry."

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"Thanks. Hopefully we'll be able to do something about it."

Rinse rinse. That everywhere? Looks like. Coventina rises from the water and grabs her towel.

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Laurent likewise gets out of the bath.

"Also," he says, "regarding molesting you in your sleep, if it puts your mind at ease I think I can promise that I find myself wanting to do that I won't hold back for fear of awkwardness as long as you seem like you're going to sleep through it. And if you happen to know of any ways to get yourself back into the state of hair-trigger sensory overload you were in when we first showed up, or anything else that similarly interferes with your ability to process intense experiences while still letting you enjoy them, I might be willing to try something while you're still conscious."

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Warm smile. "Noted. I'll give it some thought."

Probably blindfolding her wouldn't be sufficient or he would've suggested that himself. That's okay. Solving this seems like a fun challenge actually.

She finishes drying off, sets out her regalia for tomorrow, and then flops naked into the bed, going face-first into the pillows. The sheets are nice and she doesn't even have to remember to make appealing noises about them on purpose.

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Laurent puts his underwear back on before getting into bed. He stretches out comfortably, displacing pillows where necessary; when he accidentally kicks one onto the floor, he retrieves it and whimsically sets it down on Coventina's back.

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Languid giggle.

 

 

 

In the morning, Coventina resists the temptation to carefully evaluate herself for signs of molestation.

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If he molested her in her sleep, he didn't leave any glaringly obvious signs!

"So, priorities for the day: equipment? Looking into available quests to see if any of them involve monsters I wouldn't mind banishing? Getting you another client or two for funding purposes and also because you seemed to be having a lot of fun? Some sort of timer so you don't need me to knock on the door after six hours?"

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Coventina laughs at the timer suggestion.

"We have enough money to last us a week or more, so I think today we should focus on getting you as wide a selection of skills to choose from as possible. Once you have some options you're pretty sure you want to spend your first points on, we can get you some suitable equipment since what skills you go for could affect what equipment is optimal. And then if its not too late in the day we can try to find a quest that doesn't look too dangerous. That's what I'd suggest."

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"I like your suggestions. Yes, let's do that."

He puts his clothes back on. They're a little the worse for yesterday's hard labour but not actually all that bad; he should figure out laundry soon but he does not need to figure out laundry today. He still, after getting dressed, thinks to mention, "A change of clothes for me might also be a good idea."

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"Yeah."

It takes Coventina a minute or two to put her divine regalia back on.

"I saw a flyer for laundry service downstairs, but... I feel like I'm half remembering there being a spell for this? Hold on."

She gets out her adventurer card and starts scrolling through her unpurchased skills. There are a lot, actually. She's pretty sure normal Level 1 Clerics aren't supposed to have this many options. Actually, she's definitely sure. This looks like the entire corpus of Cleric skills and more.

She wishes she'd bothered to design a better organization scheme for these cards, sheesh.

"Ah, here. Etheric Wardrobe. Requires fifteen Sanity. Can store one set of clothes or wearable equipment in immaterial stasis per skill point spent. If I remember right, it stores only the clothes, not any, like, dirt that's on the clothes, so it doubles as a cleaning."

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"Oh, interesting! Does immaterial stasis storage imply that you can put them on and take them off instantaneously? That might be very useful for you."

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"I know right? I probably shouldn't spend a whole skill point on that until we've got points going spare, but."

She finishes dressing.

"Alright, let's go stare at some folks."

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"Let's!"

On their way out of the room, he asks, "So is there such a thing as wearable equipment that has magical effects? It's hard to tell. Though I suppose the fact that none of the adventurers we saw were wearing anything I'd recognize as armour is a clue... except that I can also imagine adventurers find it convenient to be able to get out of their clothes easily... actually, that makes for a good case in favour of Etheric Wardrobe or similar... how does Etheric Wardrobe handle the contents of pockets?"

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"...I've honestly got no idea. I guess we'll have to find out. As for enchanted items, yes, they're common, but unfortunately the sort of magic that just directly enhances the wearer is... badly supported by the thaumophysics. There are some items like that but there's usually a better way to use the same resources, so you're not going to see things like Bracers of Plus-Five Grace for sale or anything like that, except as a novelty."

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"So no armour with stat bonuses, but enchanted weapons, maybe enchanted utility items? Interesting. I guess we'll have to see what the selection looks like. ...is enchanting items a skill?"

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"Yeah. Pretty much everything is, by now."

Once they're outside, her lewdly accentuated and exposed body attracts nearly as much attention as yesterday, but the flavor is subtly different. It seems rumors about her have already started to get around, making her appearance somewhat less surprising.

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Spending the morning following adventurers around does yield quite a few skills. They come across at least one sparring ring, where Warriors, Rogues, and Monks are training against each other in friendly bouts. They come across Mages or Warlocks occasionally using their abilities in small, mundane ways. Outside the city wall, there's a small skirmish between ambulatory sunflowers and a pair of Druids, and over there is a Ranger doing target practice.

It's enough that they could avoid asking anyone directly to demonstrate cool skills, but they could get even more if they did.

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Oh, what an array of tasty treats to choose from!

He takes particular note of anything that seems plausibly Storm-related; tragically he doesn't have the Fitness to use the elemental weapon attacks he sees in common use by Warriors, but the Rogue's Grace-based equivalent should work fine. He also manages to glimpse some kind of lightning-based short-range teleport-or-something that he really hopes will benefit from his Storm affinity because it looks cool as hell. And he is kind of unreasonably delighted by mundane utility magic, although he probably shouldn't spend any starting skill points on it so he is going to pore over his unlocked skill list and marvel at the possibilities later after he has figured out how to get his hands on some actual combat capabilities.

"I am going to end up feeling so thoroughly oppressed by skill point limitations, aren't I," he says wryly after watching the Ranger loose an arrow that multiplies into a few dozen projectiles over the course of its flight and peppers the target with jagged shards of metal. "I don't even particularly want to do that, I just resent the fact that I'm never going to get the chance because I'm probably going to have access to thirty different skills that are all more useful to me by tomorrow."

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"I know what you mean," Coventina agrees. "But, at least being spoiled for choice is a nice problem to have."

It's past noon, by now.

"Wanna keep wandering or do you think you're good to get lunch and look at the quest board?"

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"Let's see what the quest board has to offer us today."

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Lunch is as good as dinner was yesterday. The restaurant bar inside the guild hall seems to be pretty reliable.

A new quest has been posted on the board since yesterday. A farm owner a mile up the road has posted a bounty: 30,000 Lake for killing at least six "bog worms" around his property. It does not list a minimum level requirement either.

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(If you watch Laurent eat, knowing what he said about not eating for pleasure in front of strangers, it's actually pretty visible how little attention he's paying to how things taste. He does notice but he's not dwelling on it.)

"And what, pray tell, is a bog worm?" he wonders.

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Luna, who is out from behind her counter, volunteers an answer as she's passing by. "Oh, those are, well, they're a sort of amphibious worm that likes to turn good land into a bog. You have to be careful about them because they're among the monsters with breeding capabilities, so they can spread quite far from their spawn point. Rumor has it that the farm owner who posted this has been having trouble because his daughters keep getting snatched by the bog worms and impregnated, which makes them too incapacitated to work the fields."

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"That sounds like a bad time for all concerned!" He glances at Coventina. "Worth checking out, you think?"

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"Well, it is the only quest that doesn't say we have to be Level 2 or better."

She turns to Luna. "Anything else you can tell us?"

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"I believe so, if you'll be taking on the quest? One thing you may note is that, given the rumors, it seems safe to say this variety of bog worm is gynevorous, and thus likely violent toward male adventurers."

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"That... makes sense, now that you put all the pieces together. Hmm. That's... hmm. I could imagine it making them harder for me to banish, but I'm not sure that's true; does it?"

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"B-Banish? On your first quest?" Luna repeats. "Well, that's... you certainly are ambitious."

Luna recovers her smile. "I suppose I'll wish you luck."

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"Efficiency!" he says brightly.

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This makes Luna giggle somewhat despite herself.

"Well, let's make it official then."

The process of registering the quest involves, again, the arcane device that prints the adventurer cards being feed written info on the quest.

Bog Worms Slain: 0 / 6

gets printed on the back of both of their cards.

"It isn't strictly required to register first, if you'd already slain a bog worm and brought back proof we would count that toward your total, but as with most things, doing it through your adventurer card is far more... efficient," Luna explains.

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"Hooray for adventurer cards!"

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With their task set, the next thing to do is buy equipment.

"We probably shouldn't overspecialize for this one quest, but, knowing what we're up against, plus what skills you'll be going for with your first level up, means we can make a pretty informed decision now. What do you think?"

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"I think... I want some kind of Grace-based weapon skill, and whatever that thing was with the lightning and the apparent short-range teleportation. And I suspect that means I want a sword; I think Rogues with swords were the source of the most useful-looking weapon skills I saw overall on those sparring grounds. Well, useful-looking accounting for the fact that I'm currently hopeless at Fitness."

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"That makes sense. Lemme see your card, that was a Monk, right? With the zipping around as lightning. I think that sounds like a Monk skill..."

After getting a look at his card, she finds a skill called Fulmindash in his list which is the only one that fits. "I think this has to be it. Requires fourteen Moxie. Hey yeah, you could get this at Level One. Just barely. And look here, you've got Bladework unlocked, with more than a full point's worth of techniques too. Only requires ten Grace."

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"And here I was planning to spend all my stat points on Sanity until my Sanity no longer yielded to stat points, but I suppose it is more efficient to achieve basic combat functionality first. All right."

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After shopping around a little, they can find a basic katana for Laurent which has a low level durability enchantment and a firm-grip enchantment, for 7,500 Lake. A basic set of combat leathers to protect his vital organs is about that much again.

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Seems reasonable all told. He'll take it.

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It's certainly a start.

Coventina buys herself a pair of heavy-duty but unenchanted sap gloves. Clerics don't get any sharp-things skills, but just in case she needs to hit something she wants more than her bare fists.

"Alright, north is... that way. Let's give this a shot."

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"Let's!"

As they head north, he muses, "She never did actually say whether banishing monsters not adapted to my anatomy is any harder."

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"I mean, it depends on the monster. But probably we should tentatively plan on not getting the opportunity to do any banishing and having to just kill the things. That should still get you to level one and me to level two."

Something else occurs to her.

"Uh, also my Ardor stat is more than twice yours. I think if we do crack a core, even an androvorous monster might ignore you if I'm within fifty yards, to say nothing of a gynevore."

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"That sounds like it erases some of your objections to the maiming hack, although I suppose not all of them and also we have better options now. But if I can't banish a monster while you're anywhere near it, I effectively can't banish monsters, at the moment. I guess we could try to capture one somehow..."

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"If we can get one by itself we can experiment."

Walk walk walk.

"Actually, you might want to put some points in Ardor even if we solve the first problem some other way. Riding out a banishing, pun intended, can get pretty... intense."

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"For previously discussed personal reasons I think I actually prefer my low Ardor for the moment even if it makes things less comfortable than they might otherwise be. By the time I have the points to spare, well—how many stat points per level do I get, actually—" He's sure this was on a pamphlet somewhere but he can't call the number immediately to mind.

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"Two. And, of course, it's your call."

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"Then by the time I've put two points into Moxie to meet the requirements for Bladework and four into Sanity because maximizing the intelligence stat is the obvious first move if you find yourself in a stat system, I may very well be more open to experiencing Ardor around you. We'll see."

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Eventually, they crest a hill an see a trail of soggy earth slithering across the ground. At the head of that trail, out in plain sight, is a massive mottled green worm creature as thick around as a person is tall. It moves slowly, and doesn't yet seem to notice them.

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"Problem the third," Coventina realizes. "I have no fucking idea where in their bodies these things keep their mana cores."

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"Unfortunate. We may have to experiment."

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"Do you want some of my breastmilk or saliva before you charge in?"

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He considers this. "Saliva seems more convenient. How long is the effect likely to last?"

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He'd rather kiss her than suck on her breasts? Interesting.

"Depends on the dose, I think. Anywhere from half a minute to half an hour, I'd guess based on what I remember."

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"In that case probably the correct move is to try to maximize the dose and then immediately go into battle and hope that it lasts long enough to protect me from harm. And if it doesn't we have other options."

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"If you want to maximize the dose, you're going to have to suck my tits," she points out.

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"Yes, I suspected as much but I wasn't sure of the mechanics." He shrugs. He smiles slightly. "Efficiency!" he says, in an echo of the tone he used in the conversation with Luna.

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Coventina giggles a little helplessly at that.

 

Proving the practicality of her regalia, she offers him an already-bare breast.

Her milk is sweet and warm. It tastes like the very concept of vitality and quenched thirst. Nectar of Sin refills her at a biologically impossible speed, to a measured point, making sure she can neither go empty nor leak. When Laurent sucks, the milk comes easily.

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He is neither hesitant nor eager, just very focused and practical. Sort of reminiscent of the way he eats food in public, actually.

When he eventually stops drinking, his first comment is, "Does the effect still work if it's not consumed immediately after leaving your body? We could get a couple of bottles to fill, in case we're separated somehow and I find myself in urgent need of healing. Later, though. Presumably a quest with no minimum level requirement is really unlikely to go that badly."

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She hardly expected otherwise, but she hopes he was enjoying himself on the inside.

"You'd have to put it in a container that's mana-proof, which is expensive, or it'll just turn into normal body fluid after about an hour, but in theory, yeah, you could strap me to a breast pump and use me like a hucow."

That gives her a thought, actually, but she'll save it for later.

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"...that's not a word I've heard before but I think I can derive the meaning from context. Anyways, yes, later. For now, bog worms."

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The bog worm doesn't react until he's less than ten feet from it.

It does not appear to have eyes, but without warning it curls towards him. Four thick, hemi-tubular light-purple tentacles spurt out of its front, shooting unerringly toward Laurent's ankles.

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That's very startling!

He jumps back, nearly trips, manages to roll instead, slashes wildly at the tentacles with his sword; meanwhile his brain is very unhelpfully coming up with three different plans of attack using skills he doesn't have yet, most prominently the lightning dash but also an ice spell he wasn't even planning on getting, and he realizes immediately that once he actually has any skills at all he should practice really hard with them because otherwise they're going to stay at the same 'it would be cool if I could do that' level of abstraction as any other thing he's ever seen someone in this magic system do, and by the way could his brain please shut up

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His unskilled slash misses one tentacle. Another tentacle nearly hits him but he manages to get out of the way in time.

The worm turns more fully toward him, moving slowly but seeming able to track his footsteps. An additional four tentacles, these smaller and pink, emerge between the large four tentacles, seeming to taste the air.

It swipes at him with one of its larger tentacles again.

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He slashes at the incoming tentacle. This time his aim and control are much better.

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His sword slides along the flesh, leaving a shallow cut that oozes dark purple goo.

While that's happening the other three tentacles swipe his legs out from under him.

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He rolls again, but awkwardly, because while he has done gymnastics he has not done gymnastics with a sword. Also he's lost track of Coventina and he really hopes she's not in trouble. At least she has given every indication that if the monster caught her she'd probably enjoy the results.

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The ground he's rolling around on has become soft and muddy during the course of the fight.

The bog worm rears up as though to crush him, then slams its body down with loud muddy splat.

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He doesn't quite manage to get out of the way in time but he does manage to brace the sword on the ground so that the worm impales itself when it comes down. Hopefully all that milk will save him from the consequences of his arms also being under there. Also hopefully he will be able to keep hold of the sword long enough to pull it out.

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Something goes snap in his wrist, but the sword strikes true. The bog worm makes an eerie noise and flinches back. Thanks to the grip enchantment, the sword stays in his hand as the bog worm flings itself backward. It flails, writhing, purple goo pouring out of the wound.

By the time Laurent stands up, his broken wrist is as good as new.

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Ah, now that's more like it!

He approaches the worm and slashes at its flailing body. If they don't know where these things keep their mana cores, well, now's the time to learn.

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It fails, hitting him at least once more from sheer chance, but he recovers from that blow as easily as from the broken wrist.

It bleeds out and dies before Laurent can find the mana core, after a lucky stab hits something that might be a vital organ.

Bog Worm Slain: 1 / 6

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He takes a moment to catch his breath and look around for his partner/goddess/object.

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Here is the lower half of said partner/goddess/object sticking out of the mouth of another bog worm that snuck up on them while they were focused on the first one, sticking out of a muddy hold in the ground. Coventina's legs kick in the air, mostly-restrained and held wide open by the larger purple tentacles while two of the pink tentacles plunge into her holes.

He's turned to see this just in time for her to cum, her legs spasming and then falling limp.

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Ah. Yes. Of course.

...it might be strategic to make sure she has a lot of sex right before they go questing, so that if the monsters fuck her she'll take a little longer to orgasm... he should bring it up next time they get a chance to talk. For now, he's starting to really get a sense for this whole sword business, and he is going to test his newfound sword-related skills by attacking this worm. Perhaps depriving it of one of those large purple tentacles will help matters?

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While the monster is distracted, he manages a much deeper cut that bleeds copiously, but he still doesn't have the strength or technique to sever a tentacle entirely. The bog worm recoils and then slams its two free purple tentacles into his chest hard enough to break a rib.

This is when the ground over to one side burps upward, a third bog worm rising from underground in a small fountain of mud.

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Coventina is probably enjoying this, but she's also able to stay on task.

Somehow, she detects the wound inflicted on her captor. It's bleeding. That's damage over time.

Vital Rush, she thinks, leaning into her Moxie stat since she can't talk.

And then purple blood is spraying out of the second worm's wound like water from a firehose.

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Oh good! What a good partner/goddess/object he has. So helpful.

He slashes the second worm again, and tries to maneuver to keep it between him and the third.

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This works. Mostly because, as Worm 2 bleeds to death, Worm 3 ignores Laurent in favor of snatching Coventina right out of Worm 2's mouth.

Worm 2, despite the blood loss, isn't quite dead yet, and tries to body-slam Laurent.

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Coventina sucks in air, able to breathe again. But now she has a new problem. Worm 3 has her the right-way around, her hips and holes sucked into its mouth where it can do more than just molest her. Something very large and blunt starts pushing itself into her pussy.

"Fuuuck! This one's trying to egg me!" She says it as a warning, to be informative to Laurent, but there's most of a pleasured moan in her tone.

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This time he rolls out of the way of the body slam successfully. He slashes Worm 2 again, trying to aim for areas he didn't already dig into on Worm 1, because he still intends to find their mana cores before the last worm dies if at all possible.

"—if this process yields a baby bog worm eventually, could we dissect it to find its mana core?" he wonders aloud.

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"Yes great idea if you think you can carry me back to town because I won't be able to wa~aaa~alk!"

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Worm 2 struggles but doesn't have the strength left to fight. It is much easier to stab, but he still doesn't seem to find the core.

Coventina's feet and head are now the only part of her still sticking out of Worm 3.

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"I'm sure we'll manage."

He keeps cutting into Worm 2 until it seems thoroughly dead, then heads for Worm 3. It's probably the right strategic move to kill it before it can get an egg into Coventina, despite the promise of a vivisectable baby monster if it does, because it's the third of six bog worms and he would like to have her capable of distracting the next three when they show up.

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A jolting movement, of something suddenly yielding to a building force, an open-mouthed choked scream, and Coventina falls limp again.

It might be too late.

When Laurent goes for Worm 3, it manages to snag his leg in one of its four large tentacles. It swings him through the air and slams him into the mud hard enough to make a Laurent-shaped hollow.

He does manage to cut it in turn, and while he's embedded in the mud with the breath knocked out of him he can hear Coventina gasp, "Vital Rush!" again.

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Ow.

Perhaps instead of gymnastics classes he should have taken mud wrestling.

He struggles to free himself, and if he sees any worm parts he does his best to harm them. His sword, thankfully, is still in his hand. Grip enchantments: a wonderful invention.

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Such a wonderful invention. Probably the deciding factor in this fight, even, because he so would've lost his sword with that first strike otherwise.

The third worm is, like the second, much easier to deal with when sluggish from blood loss. Eventually it falls still with Coventina still wedged inside it from the neck down and from the ankles up.

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"Am I going to have to cut you out of there?" he wonders, already trying it.

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If he pulls, she slides right out. She's covered in slime, a small bulge in her belly, but her divine regalia is not only intact but seems to shed the slime without getting wet or stained.

"So, I think we're... nnngh... done for the day."

She puts a hand on her belly as she gets up on her knees. Coventina doesn't try to stand up.

"The egg is, basically pumping me full of aphrodisiac. And it's proto-core is enough that orgasms fuck up my mana enough for the paralysis to kick in. Need to... get back... before any more worms show up. Or before my mana gets too low and the paralysis starts lasting minutes instead of seconds."

Her legs are trembling, her hands shaking as she holds back from touching herself through sheer willpower.

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"Noted. All right, let's get you home." He puts the sword away and bends down to grab her under her shoulders and lift her up onto her feet. If she can manage to stagger along with him holding her up, they should probably do that; otherwise the next best option is probably a piggyback ride, if she can hold on well enough.

As he lifts her, he mentions casually, "If you get tired of having an egg in there we can probably get it out with some fairly brutal battlefield surgery followed by you exchanging your wounds onto me and me healing them with your bodily fluids. But I can imagine that such a procedure might have complications."

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"We'll, ungn, call that Plan B," she gasps.

She takes a step, but a small orgasm ripples through her and she loses control of her limbs for over ten seconds, falling flat on the ground unless Laurent catches her.

When her mouth works again, "The, ngh, gestation. Twelve to twenty-four hours."

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He gets his arm around her waist and her arm over his shoulder as soon as she's remotely upright, and so manages to hold her up pretty well when she falls. He even manages to pull her forward half a step while she's paralyzed, although it's kind of difficult.

"If you're going to be incapacitated for that long each time, I don't think a piggyback ride is going to work out, and assisted walking is going to be a troubled time... I suppose I can try other options." Hmm, let's see, does he remember how a fireman's carry is supposed to go... yes, there it is. He hoists her up across his shoulders and starts plodding back toward the town.

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This works well enough, though Coventina is heaver than she looks.

Walking through town with her half-paralyzed, half-slimy, half-orgasming body over his shoulders, covered in mud himself, gets a lot of attention, in yet again a new flavor.

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One petite girl in a short skirt made of metal scales and a leather shawl that they pass by on their way through town is staring particularly hard, her expression blank but her cheeks very red.

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He offers the girl a friendly smile on his way past. It is perhaps slightly incongruous.

Right, okay. They and their clothes should all have a bath together, that seems like the first order of business. —no, before he enters the hotel he is going to try to scrape most of the remaining mud and other miscellaneous substances off of them both, because he is a civilized person who doesn't unnecessarily incur enormous hassles for cleaning staff. Then he will carry her up to the hotel room and get her in the bath.

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There isn't much mud on Coventina, which is fortunate because every time he touches her more than incidentally she cums again.

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This gets attention too, and a small but perhaps worrying portion of that attention seems to be negatively directed at Laurent.

Inside the inn, the flyer advertising laundry service is still posted up in the lobby, and the innkeeper herself calls out to ask if they'd like to take advantage of said service.

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"I will do that as soon as I reasonably can," he promises the innkeeper.

Up to the room and into the bath they go. With all their clothes still on. The clothes can come off in the bath. He's going to end up having to drain and refill it before they can get properly clean, isn't he...

"How are you holding up?" he asks Coventina as he sets her down in the tub and turns on the water.

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The drain can be set to drain slowly, at the same rate the tub fills, so that the water stays clean.

"Oh, I'm g-great," she pants, only half sarcastic, a hand straying between her legs. She moans, shudders, then falls limp, making a small frustrated noise in the back of her throat. After about thirty seconds she can move again, and adds, "I'll be fine. But this might count as, as a state where, nhg, where I wouldn't be able to pay much attention to you. If that and a blindfold and me not being able to move would be enough for you to feel, not-perceived."

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"The thought had occurred to me. We're getting clean first," he says, scrubbing mud out of his hair. "Then we'll see."

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Coventina just moans in acknowledgement, mindlessly tries to masturbate again, and ends up paralyzed for another thirty seconds.

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Getting clean involves Laurent washing Coventina, eventually! Perhaps she will have a positive reaction to this.

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She sure does, though how much of that is the monster egg and how much is just her is probably a question without a meaningful answer.

Once they're clean, she manages enough self control to climb out of the tub with only some help from Laurent, but to dry off she's going to have to put the towel on the floor and lay down on it.

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This can be arranged.

"I suppose we should have the safer sex conversation before you get too distracted—what should I know about this world in that regard?"

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It takes her a moment to parse his words, and then has to wait for the paralysis to wear off to answer.

"Goddess. Demigods not allowed. Mortals use, enchanted items."

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"Good to know!"

He dries her off and wrings out his clothes as best he can and drapes it over assorted furniture to dry further, and then he carries her to bed, and blindfolds her, and snuggles up to her and starts idly playing with her tits.

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Rapturous moaning, wriggling, then limp panting.

If he keeps playing with her she's pretty much going to remain paralyzed the whole time, which is fine with her as long as her orgasms stop getting ruined.

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Laurent's plan for this evening involves Coventina having plenty of orgasms! He seems intent on discovering by methodical experimentation all the ways she-in-this-state enjoys being touched. You could almost imagine him with a little mental checklist, investigating her breasts in detail first, then trying some more obscure locations before finally ending up at her vulva. And once he has a map with decent coverage, he can start combining things...

It is possible that at some point amid all this sensation he actually fucks her, but if he's doing it right, she's not going to know for sure either way.

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She definitely notices when he finally penetrates her with more than a finger, but by that point she's not having thoughts about whether the thing filling her insides is a cock or not. Even if she could indicate some awareness of that, she probably wouldn't. She can totally respect his effort, there.

It's quite a challenge to map her out this way, when she's both paralyzed and so turned on that she's basically spontaneously cumming with no stimulation as often as not, but the paralysis isn't total, given how she can still breath and make the occasional noise and the way her pussy clenches when she cums hard definitely feels and looks different than when she's just dipping her toes in the pool of orgasmic possibility simply because the space outside that pool has shrunk to nothing.

Some very relieved and extremely pleased moans definitely manage to leak out through the paralysis when she's getting stimulation commensurate with how eagerly her body is reaching for orgasms.

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Well, if the conditions make it more difficult to draw a useful map, he'll just have to put a little more time and effort into the project.

 

 

Eventually, after a very long time (of which the last, oh, hour or so is spent testing how long he can keep her in a state of continuous-or-consecutive orgasm), he stops actively touching her and just snuggles up next to her and goes to sleep.

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The aftershocks keep her paralyzed for hours afterward. She maybe manages to fall asleep, but she isn't sure. She isn't spontaneously cumming anymore either; even if she's still more turned on than satisfied, she's very satisfied. She notices she's able to move again at some point in the dead of night. She dozes.

She aches for Laurent to fuck her again, but not urgently. Not enough to wake him up about it.

She does roll over and get more comfortable, wrapping an arm and leg around Laurent. She tugs the blindfold back into place, in case Laurent will feel a way about waking up face-to-face with her, and dozes some more. Her belly is swollen and heavy.

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In the morning, he wakes up being thoroughly snuggled. It's very cozy. A good way to start a day.

"Good morning," he says. "How are you doing?"

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"Horny as fuck, but still not as bad as when we got back."

She lifts the blindfold and glances down. Her belly is pretty big.

"I think it should be out before breakfast. Not much longer."

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"Will containment be difficult from the start?"

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"You should probably cut the egg open before it hatches, but if you do it should be fine."

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"I expect I can manage that."

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Coventina continues to be way hornier than her usual resting state until, with a lurch in her guts, it begins.

It hurts, coming out, but that doesn't stop it from making her cum. Her body seems to have no trouble pushing it out of her womb without her conscious input, but it still takes minutes upon minutes of orgasmic clenching before the smooth black surface of the egg makes her vulva bulge outward before revealing itself, stretching her wide as it emerges.

She gasps, jolting as the mana circuit breaks and the paralysis lifts while she's still cumming, slapping a hand between her legs and rubbing furiously as she shudders in ecstasy.

The egg is about half the size of a basketball, smooth black, and egg-shaped.

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And Laurent is right there with his sword to attempt an amateur dissection.

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He's probably going to want to do that in the bathroom. The eggshell is slightly soft, not rigid, and seems to be holding its shape via fluid pressure.

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Yep, he can do that! Into the bathtub you go, fetal bog worm!

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There is indeed a miniature bog worm in the egg.

It's curled up tight, but prying it out isn't too hard.

He can cut into it at his leisure. If he's thorough, he will find a smooth sphere of crystal, smaller than his thumbnail, in the very tip of the worm's tail, filling the last, tiniest segment of the worm's body.

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He is indeed thorough. As soon as he obtains the crystal, he does a quick cleanup and then heads back to bed to inform Coventina of his findings.

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"Huh, I guess that makes sense. What'd you do with the corpse?"

She stands up and stretches, slightly wobbly, but with a smile.

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"Currently still in the bathtub for lack of a better idea, why do you ask?"

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"Cause after last night I need another bath," she says wryly. "Whatever, I'll work around it."

She uses a hand-towel to wash herself decently well, then dresses in her shorts and bikini top.

"I'll take our clothes to the laundry?" she asks. 

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"Yes, thank you. And we should probably find someplace to dispose of this thing..."

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They can cut it up even smaller and scoop it into the toilet.

The laundry service is quick and gets their clothes back to them inside twenty minutes. Not quite dryer fresh, but close enough.

"So, breakfast at the guild hall?"

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"Breakfast at the guild hall! And then perhaps we can head back to that farm and take care of the rest of those bog worms."

He pauses thoughtfully, then adds, "All reasonable evidence is pointing in the same direction here, but nevertheless I feel compelled to ask, did you have a good time last night?"

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"It wasn't a literally perfect experience or anything but it was pretty awesome and I'm glad you were there to do it to me."

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"Oh good! All right, let's go have breakfast."

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Breakfast is once more tasty.

Some amount of the ambient conversation seems to be about Laurent and Coventina, though. Overheard speculations include various versions of: they lost a fight and Coventina got raped. Competing garnishes include: Coventina is a slut who lost on purpose. Coventina nobly sacrificed herself to save Laurent. Laurent nobly sacrificed (his ass) to save Coventina. Laurent is paying Coventina to distract monsters for him. Coventina is paying Laurent to fight her battles for her. Coventina is secretly a succubus. Coventina and Laurent are secretly siblings. Coventina and Laurent are secretly married. Coventina is an exiled princess who sold herself to Laurent in exchange for escaping her responsibilities. It goes in circles like that the whole time they're eating.

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Also while they're eating, one girl in particular seems oddly restless.

She'll get up from her spot, carry her food to a new seat. Sit there. Shoot furtive glances at Laurent and Coventina. Eat for a minute. Then get up again.

She walks past their table six times, picking a spot slightly closer to them each time, until she's only one table away.

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Whenever he happens to catch that particular girl's eye as she's gradually creeping closer, he offers her another friendly smile and then goes back to his meal.

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She finches at being caught looking, regardless of how friendly his expression is.

Eventually, though, she works up the courage to timidly approach their table.

"Um, hi. Is it true you two are having trouble with a quest? It's just, I, um," she takes a breath, "if you'd like a third party member, I'm available? I'm, um, Sky."

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"It's very true that we've been having trouble with a quest. I think we're probably going to have a little less trouble today than yesterday but I still wouldn't mind the help. I'm Laurent; it's lovely to meet you."

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Oh no he's nice.

Blush.

"W-Well, if you bring me along, I can definitely handle whatever you need me to! I'm a Shaman with a, um, defensive technique, that can handle any encounter. Probably."

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"That sounds very useful!" he says, intrigued. "How does it work?"

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Sky opens her mouth several times to start explaining, and fails each time.

Finally, she just ducks her head and hands over her adventurer card.

ELLEN GUST "SKY"
Level 2

CLASS: "Shaman"
Class Bonus: Fitness - Your fitness stat increases your resistance to mana paralysis.
Class Bonus: Allure - Your allure stat increases the range of your spells.

Stat Points: 0

Fitness - 10
Ardor - 19
Grace - 7
Moxie - 6
Sanity - 10
Allure - 17

Skill Points: 0

"Beacon Hallow" (Channeled, Local Area)
Draw and hold the attention of all hostile entities in range.

"Sacred Greater Locus of Lust" (Instant, Local Area)
All hostile attention currently on the caster is converted completely to sexual attention, bypassing all resistances.

"Mirror of Planes" (Channeled/Instant, Touch)
Absorb and contain the product of any one offensive spell, then release it at a new target.

ELEMENTS: Spirit - 86% Affinity

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"Oh, I see! Yes, that could be very useful indeed. I'd be happy to have you on the team." He glances at Coventina. "Thoughts?"

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Wide-eyed hope.

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"Well, I certainly think she'd fit right in."

She gestures at the seat next to her. "Come join us."

"This'll fit into a holy trinity strategy. Tank, healer, and damage. Should make it go much easier."

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"Yes, that makes sense." Wry smile. "If only I were a little better at damaging things. Well, hopefully I'll achieve my first level sometime soon."

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"Today, if we have anything to say about it."

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"That would sure be nice!"

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After everyone is finished eating, and they all take a look at each other's adventurer cards. (Coventina's bringing a blush to Sky's face all over again.) Sky follows her new party members back to their inn where Coventina changes back into her awe-inspiring lewd dress. Sky has seen it before, of course, but seeing it, seeing this extremely gorgeous girl in it, up close, is a whole new experience.

Sky has a small hand-axe and a little buckler shield that she straps on, but if things go well they'll just be for show. She's practiced with the axe and shield a little but so far she's never actually had to use them in combat and she hopes it stays that way.

As the three of them set out, Sky sticks close, and once they're outside the city wall she brings herself to ask, "Um, Coventina? Your name... can I ask if you, um, is it because of...?"

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This is going to be a running gag, isn't it.

"I'm not a member of the Axiom Church, if that's what you mean." Technically true.

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"Oh..."

Relief, but also a smidge of disappointment.

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That is a smidge of disappointment.

Now isn't the time, but Coventina is going to have to poke that later. With a natural Ardor stat as high as her own, that much shyness, and a reaction like that about the church of rape-you-for-your-own-good. Yeah, this girl is in dire need of some kinkpraising.

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And shortly, the newly triadic party arrives back at the field where lurk the bog worms.

There's one now.

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"Well, we found out where they keep their mana cores—it's in the tip of the tail," he says for Sky's benefit, "but we still don't have a solution to the problem of getting them to pay attention to someone with my rather pathetic Ardor score when the two of you are around. Thoughts, anyone?"

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"Um," Sky offers shyly, "complete this quest by killing them, level up, then pick a different quest with a different kind of monster?"

She looks at her feet. "I tried to warn my last party, but they insisted and then still said I stole all their experience points on purpose and kicked me out..."

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"That's very unfair of them!" he says, indignant on her behalf. "You have a useful ability and you warned them about its tradeoffs! I half want to purposefully leave one of the bog worms for you to banish just because I'm annoyed about how unfairly they treated you. —if that's all right with you, that is."

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Oh no he's asking her to make a decision what does he want her to pick, um...

"It's alright with me."

There, that should count as agreement with whichever thing he wanted her to agree with, right?

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"We'll see what tactics dictate, then, it could be that I don't get the chance. But for now, killing most of the worms and leaving you one if possible seems like a reasonable thing to try."

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"Sure does."

She lifts and presents her bare breasts.

"Milk time?"

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"Milk time," he agrees, and once again applies himself to her breast with the same serene practicality with which he applies himself to lunch.

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Sky is blushing too hard for her own attempt to be serene about this to be very convincing. She's kind of obviously trying to put up the same front Laurent is, but failing spectacularly.

She's shaking as she takes the gorgeous Cleric's nipple in her mouth and sucks.

It's not fair why is it that delicious no wait just focus on just the taste that's actually less awkward.

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Coventina makes an educated guess and starts petting Sky's hair while the smaller girl suckles. She takes the shiver and moan she gets as confirmation and slides her hand down to grab Sky's butt, and feels the shy Shaman startle and then slowly but visibly relax.

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Laurent notices enough of this that he's smiling about it when he breaks away.

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The worm on the field is joined by a second one, emerging from the muddy ground like a miniature whale from the sea.

The first one is headed in the opposite direction, but for the moment they're in the same patch of mud.

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(Boob boob soft milky boob in her mouth, can Coventina please sit on her face.)

Breaking away reluctantly as soon as Laurent does, Sky forces herself to focus on the bog worms. She glances back and forth between the worms and Laurent a few times, awaiting orders.

"Um, should I pull?"

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"Yes, I think so."

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Sky scampers down the hill, bringing both bog worms into range.

Once she's close enough, she plants herself and casts, "Beacon Hallow!"

A wave of pressure seems to thrum through the very bones of the world. Both bog worms instantly swivel to focus on her, plowing forward through the mud to reach her. Large purplish tentacles shoot out to wrap around her limps, ready to snatch her up.

"Sacred Greater Locus of Lust!"

This time it's a pink glow that emanates from Sky, a glow which sinks into the two bog worms. Both worms stop tugging at her with their larger tentacles, her feet dropping back to the churned earth. They leave her wrapped up but hold her loosely as the smaller pink tentacles shoot out of both worms and mindlessly start fighting over her holes. Two tentacles each find their way into her mouth, pussy, and ass, while the remaining two (one from each worm) slide up under her leather shawl to maul her breasts.

Sky cums in seconds, a milder form of the paralysis setting in. She avoids going limp thanks to her class-given resistance, but her Fitness stat is low enough that she still can't move much as the bog worms continue to mindlessly tentacle her.

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This is a convenient state to have the bog worms in if one wants to murder them both!

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It really is.

Both bog worms seem completely absorbed in Sky's body. They don't react at all to Laurent's presence.

They don't react at all when he stabs or slashes them. He could probably literally climb on top of one and saw through it over several minutes and it wouldn't notice.

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He contents himself with murdering them as efficiently as possible.

But since it's so very easy at the moment to attack them unimpeded and unretaliated, when he finishes with the first one he tries to crack the mana core of the second. It was in the tip of the tail, yes? Like... there?

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The worm snaps out of Sky's spell, visible quantities of mana forming a band of light between it and Sky's body. Sky screams as it suddenly yanks her upward, lifting her hips toward its mouth, from which emerges the hidden ovipositor. It plunges into Sky, tearing her wide on the massive phallus, before coiling its tentacles tight enough to bruise and hauling Sky up and down its shaft rapidly enough that her head flops.

Thick bulges travel up into Sky's womb one-after another, her belly inflating on every second down-stroke, before it shrinks again an instant later, the egg failing to properly materialize just in time for the next to swell into being. Juices splurt out of Sky as she twitches helplessly.

And then the bog worm starts to twitch, starts to get kind of see-through... and then all at once Sky falls to the mud with a splat as the bog worm's flesh dissolves into the stream of mana.

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"That was fascinating." Wait, that's probably the wrong response. "Are you all right?"

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"...mmm."

She twitches slightly as she lays in the pool of mud and cum.

"I'm... drained..."

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He looks around for Coventina, who has hopefully not been kidnapped by the final bog worm while all this was in progress.

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She has not! She presently joins Laurent looking down at Sky's wrecked self.

"You're completely out of mana?"

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Sky nods weakly. "S-sucked it all out of me..."

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Bog Worms Slain: 5 / 6

With the worst possible timing, three new bog worms push up from underground a short distance away. One of them swivels and homes in on the three adventurers, drawing the attention of the other two.

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...ah, of course, it was a rookie mistake to assume the number of bog worms they're supposed to kill is the number of bog worms there are

Welp. Sword time.

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Coventina hesitates over Sky for a moment before leaving the girl where she lay and pulling on her sap gloves. Then she turns and sprints after Laurent. She's faster than him.

She slips by the first worm, distracting it from Laurent, and then rears back and slams her fist into the second worm's body.

Her fist sinks in the full length of her arm, and then rebounds, throwing her off her feet. As her butt hits the ground, the worm's larger tentacles snatch up her legs. "Well fuck," she deadpans just before it hauls her into the air.

(Thankfully, the third worm has wandered off and isn't currently attacking them.)

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It has occurred to Laurent that it could be a tactically viable move to crack their mana cores so they focus on fucking themselves to death and not on attacking him. On the other hand if he does this to one worm while there's still another on the field, the second one will be able to focus undistracted on him once the first has stolen Coventina from it... perhaps for now he will just do regular violence.

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"Vital Rush!"

That's one worm bled-out and easy to finish off.

Coventina gasps as the smaller pink tentacles coil around her hips, one sliding inside her as they pull her into the worm's mouth. But this time at least her hands are free. She punches the worm in the head repeatedly, not doing much damage but disorienting it enough that it doesn't manage to even get its ovipositor into her before Laurent catches up.

Using Vital Rush to super-fast-forward blood loss is such a hack and she loves it.

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It really is very good.

He slashes this bog worm a few times and spares a moment to glance at Sky to make sure she is still safe and no bog worms have made off with her while he was distracted.

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Bog Worms Slain: 7 / 6

Actually, the third worm has apparently circled around while they were distracted. It looms over Sky, holding her legs up in its purple tentacles as its thick egg tube presses down into her helpless pussy. Of more concern is how the pressure is forcing her down harder into the mud, to the point where the mud is starting to cover her face.

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—yeah no that seems like a thing that has to be dealt with now and not later—he leaves Coventina with her worm, who she will hopefully be able to bleed to death now without further help, and heads for Sky as fast as he can go while still maintaining the ability to use his sword when he gets there.

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The final bog worm flails at him with two of its larger tentacles, but its kind of in the middle of something here and only actually succeeds in fending Laurent off at all because he is still level zero.

The mud oozes over Sky's face, smothering her.

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Coventina is managing to wrestle her bog worm on even terms, it being weak and woozy making it an even match. She manages to get a leg-lock around its ovipositor and in its delirium that's enough for it to forget about egging her and go back to weakly fucking her with the pink tentacles.

She decides that's good enough and turns to get off another, "Vital Rush!" at the final worm, but the wounds Laurent has managed to inflict aren't big enough for that to be fast enough, Sky will heal from oxygen deprivation but not from lungs physically full of mud and also drowning is utterly fucking awful even if you survive it so...

C'mon Laurent, you can do it...

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He should focus first on hitting the big purple tentacles since without those it loses some leverage and he might be able to pull Sky out of the mud—and if that doesn't do it, he can try slicing the egg tube directly, which might refocus its attention on him and give Sky a chance to save herself—but will she be able to move? He should try to account for that—

Okay. He arrives. He uses his free hand to grab whichever available bit of Sky has the best available leverage and try to pull her face out of the mud as a preliminary measure. Then he gets both hands on his sword and slices into the nearest purple tentacle with as much force as his body can muster, which is not enough force and he should be using Coventina's milk to cheat at fitness training, and the rest of that thought can be saved for later because right now he is doing violence.

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The best point of leverage is probably Sky's hair. Her legs would be easier to grab, sticking up as they are, but the bog worm already has hold of those. Sky only seems half aware as she spits enough mud out to resume breathing, lost in the sensation of the egg being forced into her, but at least she's not going to drown.

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The worm manages to land a hard blow on Laurent while he's busy with Sky's head, and he doesn't manage to get close enough to cut at the ovipositor, but with every wound bleeding like a water jet thanks to Coventina, it only takes another half-dozen slashes before it falls dead, its weight driving its egg-tube even deeper into Sky, deep enough that she'd probably be injured if not for Coventina's milk.

Bog Worms Slain: 8 / 6

The field is quiet, finally.

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...right. Okay.

He looks back at Coventina. Is she all right? Did she manage to take out her worm?

Almost regardless of the answer to that question, the next thing to do is probably get Sky detached from that worm corpse, so he's already starting to put his sword away and lean down to grab her.

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Coventina struggles free of her worm's corpse, and jogs over to help. All three of them are a mess, and Sky is going to be paralyzed for the rest of the day. She was already exhausted of mana and now she'd got an egg in her too.

"Okay, hold on, I'm gonna try something."

She's supposed to be the fucking goddess of water. She should not need a skill point for this, she should be able to just brute-force it...

A circle of blue mana-light forms over her palm. Eight sub-circles inscribe themselves within. Then two more circles each with one sub-circle. Then enclose that in a bigger circle, then a concentric circle around that...

 

"Create Water" (Channeled, Touch)
Conjure clean water.

Pure, clean water erupts from the air in front of her hand, blooming out as it is created and then pouring down to the earth. It's not going to make the ground any less muddy but it should at least rinse the worst of the blood, slime, and mud from the rest of them.

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"Oh, thank you, that's very helpful."

He looks down at Sky with a wry smile.

"Well, looks like I'm carrying another party member home today. —is our hotel room a reasonable place to take her? Even if I knew where she lived, I don't think it would be safe to leave her alone there..."

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"Sky, do you want us to take you back to our room and do lewd things to you while you're helpless to stop us?"

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Squeak.

Nod nod.

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"Works for me!" he says cheerfully, hoisting her up onto his back.

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Her paralysis resistance is actually enough for her to talk, even now. Her complete in ability to reply to this in words is all natural. Even without the egg leaking aphrodisiac into her body she'd be so incredibly turned on by this situation, too. 

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Once more, they get various Looks as they traipse back into town.

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That is fine with Laurent. They're adventurers, they adventured, now they have an unwell party member and are taking care of her. Any further details of this situation are their own business.

"We should probably all have a bath, when we get home, and then perhaps you could go handle the laundry?" he suggests to Coventina. "As the only party member currently in possession of a second set of clothes."

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"Sure," Coventina agrees.

Once they arrive at the room, she holds Sky while Laurent fills the bath, then strips the smaller girl (feeling her up thoroughly in the process) and sets her in the bath with Laurent while she struggles out of her regalia and then, buck naked, walks downstairs to avail them of the laundry service.

Just because she has a second set of clothes doesn't mean she'd rather get them dirty or wait until after they bathe.

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Alone in the bath with Laurent, naked, helpless, dependent on him, and overwhelmingly turned on.

"..." nope, still nonverbal.

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"...I see," says Laurent.

Well. First order of business: get himself and Sky clean without anyone drowning. Should be fairly simple.

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Coventina is back promptly to help. She joins them in the bath and together she and Laurent can get Sky cleaned up easily. It's much less of a task than Coventina herself was. Sky is a consistent amount of paralyzed that makes her slightly pose-able, instead of alternating between ambulatory and completely limp; Coventina takes advantage of this to feel the smaller girl up aggressively and finger her to several orgasms as they wash her.

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Sky is floating on a cloud of bliss. This is so much better than her last party who didn't even rape her before they kicked her out. Her social anxiety falls away as she sinks into subspace, eyes closed and a smile on her face.

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Once everyone's clean and they're ready to get out of the bath, she pokes at a ring that remains on Sky's pinky finger. "Say, Sky, is that a permanent Ring of Fertility Suppression?"

(Sky nods hazily. "Y-Yeah?")

 

"I think I'm going to relax and soak for a while," Coventina tells Laurent, smirking slightly. "You want to play with this adorably lewd and lovely little slut for a while or should I hang on to her and use her as a bath toy?"

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"I can think of a few things I might like to do with her."

He scoops Sky up— "also, that reminds me, I should be using your milk to cheat at strength training, I think it might change the efficiency calculus significantly. Later, not now—" and carries her to the bedroom, and sets her down in the bed.

He... doesn't think he wants to fuck her, actually, although it's still good to know that if he did it wouldn't be a problem. He thinks he wants to try mapping her out like he did with Coventina last night. It seems like a nice way to show her a good time without getting into anything that disturbs his privacy intuitions.

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Sky is easier to map out, given how she is slightly less paralyzed, but also harder, given how she's deep in subspace and much, much easier to render unable to pay attention to him.

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That's okay! He likes a challenge!

He might get a little carried away and forget to pay attention to the time. Probably Coventina will be willing to interrupt eventually. Hopefully she won't fall asleep in the bath and drown. Meanwhile, Laurent is going to be giving Sky a really absurd number and variety of orgasms.

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They're briefly interrupted by the return of the laundry. Coventina emerges from the bath to answer the door and thank the maid who brought their things.

"I'm thinking maybe I'll go to the guild hall and get my level up while you're playing with our new cutie, unless you'd rather I stay while you play?"

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He considers this question.

"Perhaps you should give us each a quick drink so we don't tire out so fast and then go get that level-up?"

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Approving smile. "Absolutely."

She breasts boobily over to give them some titty milk. Enough to last the full half-hour at least. (Sky has to be held in place and made to drink, but does so happily.)

Once they've had their fill, she puts on her shorts and bikini top and heads out.

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And now there's all kinds of things that can be done to Sky while she is full of divine restorative! (The things he is thinking of specifically involve lots of orgasms.)

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Sky can have so, so, so many orgasms.

She can also be conveniently oblivious to everything else! Laurent can be so comfortable about things as he has his fun with her.

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It does occur to him that she's much more oblivious to her surroundings than he expected and he could probably get away with actually fucking her and have her legitimately not notice, but he's having fun in other ways. He does put some effort into confusing the issue, though, because if he only confuses the issue when he plans to need the cover that's not very much cover at all, and also because it's fun to pursue alternative methods of making her feel nicely full.

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Everything about this is awesome.

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Eventually, long after their Nectar of Sin doses have worn off, Coventina returns and slips inside, hoping not to disturb them if they're still in the middle of anything.

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The thing they are in the middle of, by that point, is sleeping. She may presume she is welcome to join them.

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He may be asleep but Sky isn't. She dozed off for a bit when Laurent finished with her but the egg in her belly is still mainlining lust into her bloodstream and she's definitely awake now.

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Coventina sighs, then strips and crawls into bed. She pulls Sky's hips out for better access and plunges first her fingers, then her whole fist into the paralyzed girl's drooling pussy.

 

 

 

 

 

It's the middle of the night when the egg finally comes out. Coventina has so far avoided waking up Laurent, but...

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Sky practically levitates off the bed as the egg slides free, screaming in rapture as the paralysis lifts. Even with a quick-thinking Coventina's hand over her mouth (which only makes her cum harder) she's pretty loud, and shakes the bed with her thrashing.

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"What's the emergency?" he mumbles sleepily, sitting up. "Ah."

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Holding the trembling, sweaty form of Sky, Coventina gives him a wry look.

"I think we might need to have a conversation about aftercare, Laurent."

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...he blinks a few times, catching up with the current state of reality, then says, "Yes, I agree. Also, someone should probably do something about that egg."

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"I've been awake all night. You go chop it up and flush it," she says good-naturedly as she continues to pet Sky.

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"I can do that."

He does that.

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When he gets back, Coventina gives him a reassuring smile.

"So, like, this is not a problem yet, to be clear, but it's kind of my thing to notice and intercept certain kinds of patterns before they become problems, right? So. Last night, you fell asleep and left me awake and paralyzed for most of the night. Genuine props for how not agonizingly horny I was the whole time, you did good there, but I was still somewhat agonizingly horny and trapped in my own body for several hours after you fell asleep. Now, I'm cool about that. I'm not easy to phase and a lot of phase-y stuff doesn't bother me in the first place, but, Eph-Why-Eye being that helpless and denied is not my kink."

Pet pet the now-snoozing Sky.

"Tonight, you fell asleep and left Sky here awake and paralyzed and effectively alone with her own, I assume thanks to you much reduced agonizing horniness. Now, again, this isn't a problem because being that helpless is Sky's kink, isn't that right?"

(Sky curls into herself a little but is still subspace-y enough to nod.)

"Right, so, everything's cool. But it could've not. Especially tonight. You really should have waited for me to get back before you went to sleep and left Sky unsupervised. Do not do the equivalent of forgetting to untie the sub after the scene is over. That's kind of a no-no."

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"...I think you may be vastly overestimating my domain expertise here," he says. "In that I don't... have any. I have never done this before. I apologize for not making that clear. Please tell me what I need to know to do a better job."

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"You're fine. You're doing a great job. This isn't about the sex, okay? That was fantastic. I wasn't even thinking about this at the time, this is hindsight speaking. Just, we were taking advantage of a state of helplessness that was not under your control to do something kinky. I was actually going to suggest something similar using a more thorough blindfold, earplugs, and lots of rope. If we did that, you could untie me when you were done, right? But it wasn't in your power to end the paralysis when the fun ended, so it was kind of neglectful of you to... abdicate responsibility for our continued state of helplessness and go to sleep, right?"

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"—no, that's not the kind of doing a better job I meant—being able to give you a good time is inconsequential if I can't be safe about it," he says. "And I don't know how. It didn't occur to me that not going to sleep was an option, I think, although it seems obvious now that you point it out. And I still don't know..." He makes a slight searching-for-words gesture. "What I'm doing or how to do it. How to avoid making the same mistake again differently. How to take care of you properly."

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"You have been. I just noticed this one thing, and I think it generalizes across a class of mistake that it's pretty easy to avoid once you're aware of it. I don't think you'll make the same mistake again. I think you're a dependable dude at heart."

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"...maybe I see what you mean. I'm not sure. It's probably a conversation for a more reasonable hour of the morning, regardless."

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"Yeah, sleep is calling."

Yawning, she grabs and adjusts her pillow under her and Sky's heads, then flops down.

"Really, all you have to do is notice when you're being depended upon, and the rest comes naturally," she opines, snuggling in. "I wouldn't worry too much..."

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He curls up next to them and doesn't respond.

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She reaches out to stroke him a little, hoping to be comforting.

 

In the morning he'll wake up to her making out with Sky, but it looks like whatever they were doing is already over.

"G'morning!" she greets. "So, I forgot to mention, I already turned in the bog worm quest. I left your shares of the reward over there," she points, "so all we need to do today is get your adventurer cards updated."

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"Oh! Thank you, that's very helpful."

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As they get up, Sky spontaneously goes and gives Laurent a hug, lasting long enough for Coventina to finish putting on her elaborate lewd dress, and then a smile as she looks around for her own equipment and gets dressed.

Maybe if she were better with words she could come up with literally anything to say about it, but... well, waking up in his arms horny again only an hour or two after falling asleep was more nice than not, even if she was still paralyzed. Maybe especially because she was still paralyzed. Coventina (somehow, embarrassingly) figured that out right away, and correctly guessed that Sky didn't feel abandoned. Sky could still talk while paralyzed, she could've spoken up and woken him if she'd actually needed to, which was probably a factor.

Coventina couldn't talk, though, it sounded like. Most people without a resistance can't. So she doesn't think Coventina was wrong to raise the concern. Sky is just kind of vaguely anxious about anything that might make Laurent... hesitant.

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He is mildly startled but hugs back, with a small friendly smile.

All right, time to get clothes on and— "at some point we should figure out a reasonable and secure method of storing all our money—" go grab breakfast and update their cards?

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"Oh! I got Luna to look this up while I was there yesterday. It turns out that Etheric Wardrobe handles pockets by either marking the pockets or the items in the pockets with a tagging rune. Anything untagged is ignored by the spell, but anything that is tagged gets put in immaterial stasis along with the outfit itself."

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Luna is happy to update their cards for them! It is a very simple process that is like getting the cards in the first place but faster and without having to feed any new information into the arcane device.

Laurent is now Level 2. He has 4 stat points and 4 skill points to spend as he pleases.

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"Two points of Moxie to qualify for Fulmindash, two points of Sanity because Sanity is the stat I most want more of for its own sake, then Bladework and Fulmindash?" he says to the party at large, and Luna if she's listening. "I would like second opinions on my choices because I'm very new to all this. Also I need to pick two more skills. I didn't realize I was going to level so quickly. Hmm, what other skills synergize well with the first two..."

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"Oh, interesting choices. It might benefit you to put two points into Bladework," Luna suggests. "Usually the skill Bladework is gated behind the Rogue skill Improvised Weapons, which provides some foundation you won't have. Doubling up on moves could cover your bases there."

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"Oh! Thank you, that's good to know. Then I'd only need one more from there..."

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He has some variety to choose from. Including many basic utility spells like Frost and Tinder (great for refrigeration and cooking, respectively), and the several moderately advanced Druid spells he witnessed the other day. He does even have Etheric Wardrobe unlocked too, if he wants it.

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Sky goes next, and her eyes bug out a little when she gets a look at her card.

"Level four?" she murmurs in a small voice.

She starts poking at her card.

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"I haven't spent my points yet either," Coventina mentions. "But I was thinking Rain of Mercy. It's a summoned cloudburst that rains healing water over a large area. And maybe Etheric Wardrobe for real because wow I'd forgotten how much of a pain manually putting my regalia on and taking it off again is."

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"Yes, I think Etheric Wardrobe would be very reasonable for you. Perhaps less so for me. Although if it let me stow away my adventurer card such that I didn't have to worry about dropping it but it was still capable of recording my activities, that would be valuable... hmm, though, I wonder..."

He starts scrolling through skills looking for something he half-remembers seeing one of those Druids get up to.

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Of particular interest to Laurent might be this skill:

"Genesic Echo" (Channeled, Area, Line-of-Sight)
Summon a standing stone that causes all magic performed in a 25 yard radius to leave a persistent effect upon the landscape for as long as the standing stone endures.

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"Right, that one sounds like fun," he says. "...it's going to turn all our battlefields into crackling hellscapes once I start Fulmindashing around, but they'll be very efficient crackling hellscapes, I think." He reads out the skill description. "Thoughts, anyone?"

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Surprisingly, it's Sky who speaks up.

"Um, I could get Stormheart," she says tentatively. "It makes it so that lightning hitting me refills my mana, and protects me from stuff like my heart stopping? It doesn't say anything about burns though..."

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"That's potentially very useful... and burns can be dealt with using Coventina's healing, I think, although I don't know how you'd feel about the experience of getting hit by lightning and that seems relevant to the question of whether you should take the skill..."

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Luna, who is leaning over the counter to the point that she's nearly spilling out of her top, chimes in. "Oh, if it doesn't specify, that means you're getting generalized lightning resistance, so it reduces all of the resulting harm. As a Shaman, you can expect your enhancement spells to be broadly protective like that."

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"Oh, um, thank you."

With a small smile, Sky pokes at her card and buys the skill. She puts the other three points into boosting her existing spells, and then, only hesitating for a moment, puts her stat points into Allure.

(This just barely pushes her Allure into actually-superhuman. She's subtly physically prettier, but the larger effect is that she starts legibly radiating, "I am just a fucktoy that can't say no to you or judge you." At her current Allure she's radiating this very quietly, but still.)

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Laurent also uses his stat and skill points as described. +2 Moxie, +2 Sanity, two points of Bladework, one each of Fulmindash and Genesic Echo.

"And now we're a much more effective adventuring party and can start taking those minimum-Level-2 quests!"

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LAURENT
Level 2

CLASS: "Adventurer"
Class Bonus: Skill Observation - Witnessing any skill in action will unlock that skill for purchase.

Stat Points: 0

Fitness - 9
Ardor - 8
Grace - 14
Moxie - 14
Sanity - 18
Allure - 11

Skill Points: 0

Greater Bladework (Manual)
Mastery of up to 20 versatile bladed weapon techniques.

"Fulmindash" (Instant, Line-of-Sight)
Become lightning in the space between moments and strike to any point you can see.

"Genesic Echo" (Channeled, Area, Line-of-Sight)
Summon a standing stone that causes all magic performed in a 25 yard radius to leave a persistent effect upon the landscape for as long as the standing stone endures.

ELEMENTS: Storm - 12% Affinity

"Indeed you can," Luna says cheerfully. "It's always nice to see a new party find some success."

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Coventina decides she will also put her points in Sanity, and then get Rain of Mercy and Etheric Wardrobe as she planned.

"I figure Rain of Mercy will be good for situations where Nectar of Sin is impractical, and visa versa. Like, I picked this spell because I can cast it for free, but it does have the downside of literal actual pouring rain, so. But Nectar of Sin should cover most situations where it suddenly raining would be inconvenient."

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"Yes, that seems very sensible!"

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"Glad you think so."

She puts her arm around Sky's shoulders and gestures toward the food bar. "Breakfast?"

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"An excellent plan." Breakfast!

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As usual, the food is tasty.

The boisterousness of the hall ramps up as other adventurers also stop in for early lunches. They slept in a bit after the night(s) they had, apparently. Actually, there is maybe a bit more activity today than on the previous two days?

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Sky blushes about it a little but happily cuddles into Coventina's side as she eats.

"Um," she says, "I still have one skill point left over. I wasn't sure what to spend it on, so I guess I'll save it?"

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"Sure," he says agreeably. "Might be handy to have one free if we run into a situation where some skill you could get would be long-term viable and short-term critical."

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Nod nod.

Nom nom.

Nuzzle.

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"We could take the day off, or spend it shopping or something," Coventina suggest. "I want to get at least a coin pouch that has that marker rune sewn in, I think I saw some things like that for sale. Maybe get you some better gear, too."

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"Yes, that sounds like a good idea. Although I also feel that I should be maximizing the amount of free time that I spend doing assorted physical exercise and cheating with your help to avoid being exhausted by it."

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"I think you're overestimating the returns you can get on that relative to just earning more stat points, but I'm definitely not going to stop you."

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"If I wasn't going to be using that time to earn stat points anyway then it's effectively free stat points! Efficiency!"

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Okay, that gets a giggle.

"Of course."

Presently, they finish breakfast. Coventina doesn't have anything particular in mind to buy, besides the runemarked pouch, so once they've got one of those she and Sky can just follow Laurent around for the rest of it.

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But what if Laurent doesn't have anything particular in mind to buy either? Well, a change of clothes would be a nice start. And then... well, what other equipment upgrades are in budget?

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A change of clothes, another sword at least as good as the one he already has, and a few more pieces of armor enchanted to self-repair overnight are all within budget if they shop around for the best prices!

 

Around noon, there is suddenly a loud sound, like an air raid klaxon echoing through the whole city. And then Luna's voice, "Attention all adventurers. Your presence is required for a mandatory quest. All adventurers, please report to the south gate for the cabbage harvest."

This message repeats twice before the klaxon falls silent.

Adventurers of all stripes, a mix of excited, annoyed, and worried, stream southward through the streets.

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"...I'm sorry, the what?"

But he follows the crowd nonetheless.

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"Don't look at me. I have no idea."

She sticks to his side, though.

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"Oh, um, they do this every year, I think," Sky offers. "I think the wild alraunes up in the hills have some kind of migration and re-planting this time of year and that produces a lot of weak plant-based monsters as a side effect? They're not all actually literally cabbages I don't think but they do tend to be edible or have a lot of edible by-product, so the guild likes to collect as much as possible."

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"That makes sense. Good thing we have better gear now! Although I wish I'd known ahead of time, I would have spent more time getting familiar with my new repertoire. I'm not even entirely sure I know how to... use spells..."

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"Generic effort plus incantation. The implanted 'muscle' memory will be triggered by the skill name automatically if you want something to happen when you say it out loud. You can get a feel for a spell with repeated castings and make it more a natural part of you, but if you say it out loud with intent that's always guaranteed to work. It's a very user-friendly system."

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"That's very handy, thank you!" he says, conscious of the double meaning between thanking her for the tip and thanking her for the design feature.

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They arrive at the gate. Dozens of adventurers make for a colorful crowd as they fan out without any real sense of organization, just filling the available space on the path and on the grass. Other parties stick together mostly, but no one appears to be in charge.

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Laurent and his party end up adjacent to this tall, graceful mage in an embroidered purple bodysuit that hugs her willow-y figure, with a fancy mage cloak draped around her shoulders. She holds a black crystalline wand with a white flower tip in each hand, and watches the horizon with interest.

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Good aesthetics. He approves.

"Hello," he says. "I just gained my first couple of levels today and I have an untested tactic involving filling a 25-yard radius with persistent lightning using an elemental persistence area effect and a lightning dash; I thought it would be polite to warn you ahead of time. I don't know that I'm going to use it but if I were you I would prefer to know the possibility loomed nearby."

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"Oh, you're referring to Genesic Echo and Fulmindash right? Are you a Druid? No wait, Fulmindash is a Monk skill but that would mean you're classless! You should definitely use the synergy that sounds fascinating. You picked something that cool as your first skills?"

This mage girl is now completely ignoring the the small avalanche of green that has just appeared on the horizon.

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"It seemed like the thing to do! I also took a couple points of Bladework so I could stop trying to reinvent swordsmanship from first principles."

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"Mobility, terrain control, and martial competence," the girl agrees, nodding sagely. "Clever of you to put that together with so few points! Did you know, I've read about classless adventurers who become enamored with many unrelated spells and end up redundant no matter what party they're in. You wouldn't think that would be common but it is! I'm happy to meet someone who's doing it right!"

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"Efficiency!" he says brightly. "Speaking of which, we should probably prepare for the approaching hordes."

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The approaching hordes have arrived!

A battlecry goes up as the roar of the avalanche itself rises up to drown it out. A wave of green smashes into the front lines and, while some manage to remain standing, more are bowled off their feet and dragged under. This breaks the momentum of the monsters enough that they spill out and seek their own targets.

Maybe a full third of the green mass seems to indeed be, literal cabbages, caught up in the avalanche and/or used as projectiles by the other monsters.

Phallic vegetables and yonic fruits. Knots of flowering vines and slithering tubers.

What looks like little more than an especially phallic zucchini with a flower on the back end that buzzes like a propeller to send it shooting through the air, goes wizzing past Laurent's face.

The defense is two-fold. Though unorganized, the adventurers in the skimpiest armor seem to be successfully kiting a lot of the monsters, distracting them so their less lewd companions can smack the life out of the monsters.

The defenders are kind of out-numbered, though, and it isn't long before they're all surrounded or entangled or being pelted with bruising force by cabbages which seem weirdly lucky at damaging clothing and armor without (much) damaging the person underneath. One girl over there in bikini armor gets nailed right in the ass by one, and falls on her face, the crotch of her bottoms shattered and falling apart. One of those flying zucchini takes advantage and spears into her, making her scream in startled pain. The flower stops being a propeller and starts growing vines out over her hips, budding and flowering and sprouting into... more cabbages.

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"Ruinous Ray!"

A beam of unlight wreathed in a white corona lances out from each of her wands as she sweeps the beams in a circle. She winces as she accidentally clips a few of the nearby adventurers, but she clears most of a circle with her sweep, giving Laurent and his party room to maneuver.

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All right. Step one: "Genesic Echo."

(They should've both taken a drink ahead of time, he badly miscalculated how fast this was going to get, but it seems like these creatures are very low on violence so it could be all right. Honestly though, it's possible they should just be drinking from Coventina every half hour. He can think about that later.)

For now, step two: "Fulmindash." A crackling trail lingers in the air, marking one edge of what will soon be a triangle around the perimeter of the elementally persistent zone. "Sky, to the runestone, and as soon as the creatures start crowding us again, pull them. Step through the lightning on the way to test how well your resistance holds up, and if it's tolerable I'll lay another bolt over you so whatever you pull gets crisped and you have plenty of mana to work with." He should mirror her Stormheart skill next time he levels; this is going to get tricky without that.

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Sky scurries to obey.

She plunges through the wall of lightning and gasps as all of her muscles twitch and tingling heat crawls all over her skin and her metal skirt gets very uncomfortably warm... but she emerges on the other side feeling stronger, even if she's still shivering from the not-entirely-bad sensation. She fumbles with her skirt, gets it off and drops in on the ground, revealing her bare mound and slick lips for all to see, but it's not like she's the only one and things are too chaotic for her to be embarrassed.

"G-Greater Beacon Hallow!"

The range on this is significant, and pulls a lot of the monsters into the Echo zone.

"Sacred Greater Locus of Lust!" Sky blurts in alarm as a cabbage nearly nails her in the head.

The monsters slow their advance, forgetting about subduing her and going straight to filling her with phallic vines and mindlessly fucking her. One of the fruit vines 'plants' itself in her ass and starts producing grapes all over her body.

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"Oh wow! That's how thatYIPE! Greater Solar Bolt!"

The mage girl sprays plasma bolts from her wands, bending and twisting as she shoots streams of bolts rapidfire into the mass of monsters crowding around Sky while also shooting down any other monsters that aggro her.

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"Fulmindash Fulmindash Fulmindash," he says, completing the triangle and then dashing almost but not quite into the wall opposite the final corner, going straight through Sky in the process. Then it's time to start cutting down distracted monsters with his sword. He thinks he has another Fulmindash or two in him if he needs to get out of a jam, but he's really going to want that Stormheart skill next chance he gets.

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Oh wow being electrocuted while she's already cumming is a very different experience than just walking through the lightning and if she had the brainspace to think about it she would definitely notice that she's not paralyzed! Instead she's having an orgasmic seizure but if she didn't have a plant-cock stuffed down her throat she'd still totally be able to cast spells!

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After a dozen or so Fulmindashes, Laurent will start to feel the way the magic moves, feel how he can move it again, at least while its fresh. Subsequent links in a chain of Fulmindashes become truly instant, activating at the speed of reflex.

Laurent's party, if you include the tall mage girl, appears to actually be doing... considerably better than the rest of this disorganized mob of ostensibly higher-level adventurers.

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Yeah, at this point it'll probably help more than it'll hurt. And the ground here is pretty solid, packed and dry and unlikely to get muddy very quickly.

Coventina raises a hand to the sky. "Rain of Mercy!"

The sky mists over, and sparkling raindrops begin to fall, healing all the non-monsters. The regeneration is nowhere near as fast as her milk, but it gives everyone a second wind and alleviates physical pain for the various adventurers who're getting fucked too roughly.

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Fulmindash is a really pretty spell. He appreciates it very much, not just tactically but aesthetically, in the way it feels to cast the magic and the way it feels to physically move his body through the lightning and the blazing trail it leaves behind.

He's still being cautious, probably overly cautious, with his mana, but he gets a little bolder about those dash chains because they're just so lovely. And extremely tactically effective. And if he makes sure to keep some areas predictably clear, he can still maneuver a little without them.

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It's good he's being careful, because maintaining Genesic Echo and dashing around that much... he'll already be able to feel the first hints of mana deprivation if he's paying attention, the slightest of misfirings of his nerves, his body showing the barest earliest hints of unresponsiveness.

The healing rain seems to have turned the tide of battle, though, making even the less-armored more eager to brave the assault of cabbages. The battle starts to wind down over the next minute, and people start harvesting the various fruits and vegetables that are growing on their fallen, moaning fellows. A few helpful souls are also cutting free the ones who look to be succumbing to mana paralysis, but there doesn't appear to be any organized effort toward that end either.

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Once things have wound down enough that there isn't a next immediate threat, he cautiously pokes a bolt of lightning.

Ow! That hurt! Like, a lot! Why did he do that!

Well, now he knows how it feels. And... hmm, how does he take down the Genesic Echo... he's going to need it down if he wants to gather any harvestable items from inside the crackling hellscape. Definitely getting Stormheart at the earliest available opportunity.

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It actually falls as soon as he wonders that. There's been a kind of weight on his mind this whole time, easy not to notice in the same way one can forget completely about a clenched fist if they're doing something complicated with their other hand. But he's been holding the spell up this whole time, and as soon as he notices that enough to 'let go', the spell fades.

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Neat. Magic is so tasty.

Right, order of operations: check on Sky, harvest her fruits, get her disentangled from all the plants that survived the lightning long enough to fuck her, give her a shot of lightning if she's paralyzed. Sounds good.

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Sky is not actually paralyzed, though the combination of orgasms and electrocution has left her completely incapable of walking. In the course of freeing her, they will find several gallons of fresh grapes on their hands, as well as a few other fruits and vegetables that survived the lightning.

Once they get her free, she clumsily grabs her fallen skirt with a shaking hand and suggests, "Can turn it into a basket?"

 

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The mage girl is busy grabbing cabbages and stuffing them into an improvised sack made from her cloak.

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"Oh, good idea!" He attempts to turn the skirt into a minimally skirt-damaging container configuration that can hold all their grapes. It goes reasonably well.

And indeed, the next thing he does is look around for the mage girl. "Nicely fought!" he calls out to her. "You really helped us out at the start there. What's your name? I'm Laurent."

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"Eelesia!" she calls, cinching her cloak-sack closed and hefting it onto her shoulder.

She comes over and smiles at him. "Lady Eelesia Rustiness, at your service!" she says brightly.

"Wow that worked even better than I imagined I don't know why that isn't a standard strategy for Druid team ups that would actually be much better than the usual tactic of crowd control and fighting each mob one on one except I guess that strategy allows the application of a wide variety of skills while the synergy you've discovered is rather specialized and would only work with a small set of skills but I bet it would work with my Ruinous Ray and really any spell that creates a wall of effect when passing through Genesic Echo so actually don't you think it's weird that the tactic isn't used more?"

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"It did get a little tight in there once I'd been dashing around for a couple of minutes; I think you need resistances to your own elemental effects to really bring the tactic to its full potential. And in my party's case both I and Sky would need resistance to whatever elemental effects were going in the pot, since I'm the one who has to dash around to bring the lightning, and she's the one who has to sit in the middle to bring the monsters. It's an intriguing idea, though. Do persistent elemental effects have any synergy of their own—would anything interesting happen if we combined persistent Ruinous Ray with persistent Fulmindash? Something else to look into."

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As the crowd starts to head back into the city with their spoils, Eelesia stays glued to Laurent and his party without even seeming to notice how she's almost hanging off his arm as they walk.

"Well Ruinous Ray is a force-based spell while Fulmindash is electric and while I've read some theories about deep interactions between lightning and fields of force I don't recall any accounts of those two elements interacting in interesting ways? There are some interesting interactions between other elements though! I wonder how many effects you could get that way because there aren't a bounded quantity of named elements and to map the interactions between all of them you'd have to record millions of intersections I bet that's why no one's done it systematically but I kinda want to try and also that's a good point I didn't realize your tank had Stormheart but its obvious now that you said it because that would be a necessary pillar of the strategy and maybe that's why its hard to pull off in a natural stochastic distribution of adventurer abilities because you'd need an elementally aligned cooperation between the three pillars of the strategy coming from three different people, and that's very unlikely if you didn't plan it in advance," she says, nodding sagely.

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"Either that or someone has to be classless but there is a baffling scarcity of classless adventurers! I don't understand it! Magic is so pretty! I'm going to spend my life in a quest for an infinite skill point hack so I can learn every skill in sight and play with all the shiny toys."

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Eelesia giggles in delight.

"Oh gosh could you imagine. I don't think that's ever been done before at all but it would be so spectacular if it was possible. I kinda had to pick Mage to start out with because I was useless without those first three skill points but I can see your point in the general case there are plenty of people who become adventurers and are already tough enough to get to level one on their own so I dunno!"

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"I definitely needed the help of my teammates but I'd hope that at least some beginner adventurers also have friends!"

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Being carried in Coventina's arms is embarrassingly comfortable. She's so glad she's petite enough for it.

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"You'd think so!"

Eelesia pauses, noticing that they've arrived at the guild hall and blinking in slight confusion as last she was registering her surroundings they were still outside the gates.

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There's teams of workers set up in the cul-de-sac outside, organized by type of produce, ready to catalog and pay the adventurers for their haul.

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Oh! They're so organized!

"Have you mostly been a solo adventurer so far yourself?" he asks Eelesia as he surveys the layout looking for the correct place to bring their grapes.

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"Oh. Well. Yes. Mostly."

She follows him over to the fruit section, offloading a handful of apples.

"Okay so actually on my very first quest I had a little bit of a friendly fire incident and I'm really not that bad about that anymore I promise you saw today right I only bruised a couple shins but first impressions stick around no matter what you do so groups tend to not pick me for extra fire-power even when I'd fit their needs."

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"We have a very good healer and I personally would not find friendly fire to be much of a concern." He glances back at Sky and Coventina. "What do you guys think?"

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Eelesia had not until this moment realized that she was sort of joining this party! Yay?

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"I like her. She seems fun." And totally your type. "And I am, in fact, a very good healer."

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Sky nods shyly.

"She would round out a standard party composition for us... and she seems nice."

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"I agree! Welcome to the team, Eelesia! If that's all right with you."

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"Oh gosh, sure!"

She nearly drops her sack of cabbages before getting them onto the right table.

"What'd you all want to do next?"

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With their loot sold off, they've earned a considerable amount of money. The cabbages totalled over 50,000 Lake and the grapes were apparently very rare in this region, considered a delicacy, so the several gallons that fit into Sky's modified skirt put them up by over 300,000 Lake.

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"Oh, excellent! We should really look into more secure ways of storing our money. And figure out what our next quest should be. And maybe all sit down and look over each other's adventure cards—oh, and I should actually start cheating at mundane fitness training and not just announcing every few hours that it would be a really good idea—and I had the thought right as the battle was starting that it would be useful if we all went around covered by Coventina's healing effects most of the time which I suppose brings us back to looking over each other's adventure cards—oh, do you suppose anyone needs to level after that fight, I wasn't tracking even the vaguest estimate of experience points—"

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"Oh yes we should check but there's probably going to be a line for that actually since the battle was so big and is there a reason not to go around in Coventina's healing oh is that like the goddess or are you actually with Axiom or actually I just thought of a place there's a training ring on the west side of town you've probably seen it if you've been exploring at all and."

Eelesia puts in a token effort to curtail her babbling, smiling sheepishly.

"And, yes, here you go. My card."

 

 

EELESIA RUSTINESS
Level 3

CLASS: "Mage"
Class Bonus: Sanity - Your sanity stat increases your casting speed.
Class Bonus: Ardor - Your ardor stat increases your spell potency.

Stat Points: 0

Fitness - 12
Ardor - 10
Grace - 17
Moxie - 12
Sanity - 23
Allure - 12

Skill Points: 0

"Forked Lightning" (Instant, Directional Area)
A fan of lightning strikes at all targets in a cone.

"Sleetblade" (Instant, Touch)
A hailstorm at your fingertips, razor-sharp ice projected in a cutting slash.

"Greater Solar Bolt" (Instant, Single-Target)
Launch a sliver of the sun as a projectile.

"Ruinous Ray" (Channeled, Single-Target)
Project a beam of deleterious force that damages and pushes back all it strikes.

"Greater Mystic Eye" (Passive)
Active mana is visible to you even when it is not radiating visible light.

ELEMENTS: Storm - 46% Affinity | Light - 66% Affinity | Force - 77% Affinity | Resonance - 39% Affinity

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"Yes, like the goddess, no I'm not with the church. Axiomites don't even have a habit of naming their kids after m-the goddess."

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"I like your spell choices!" he says, reading them over. "Especially that Mystic Eye, goodness, I wonder if that would make me even better at spotting skills, I bet it would. Next after Stormheart, maybe. Though I'm not sure precisely how seeing passive skills works so I don't know if I've had a chance to Observe it properly yet. If the fact that it's so subtle means I can't pick it up I am going to have complaints."

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"Oh, I know!"

Eelesia glances around until she spots someone using a spell. She squints, getting a good look, muttering, "Sta~aa~are..." out loud as she does.

 

"Did it work?"

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"I think so..."

He scrolls through his spell list.

"Yes, looks like. Thank you. A training ring, you said? I don't remember seeing it but I haven't been paying much attention to the layout of town yet beyond the guild hall and our hotel—oh, and the reason we don't go around covered by Coventina's healing all the time is that it would require drinking her milk all day on a half-hourly basis—Coventina, does your milk allow people to sustainably skip sleep indefinitely, by the way, I don't know if you've said—I'd be very tempted to do that if I had the option. I could fit so much fitness training into our off hours."

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"It'll stave off the physical effects of sleep deprivation but if you keep it up for a week or two you'll still go insane."

At the nerdy noble girl's blatantly curious look, Coventina shows her her adventurer card.

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Blink blink blink.

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"Oh! Okay, I see. I've never heard of Nectar of Sin before that's oh is that why your outfit is like that it's very pretty I thought maybe it'd be worth wearing just for that if you don't mind the attention but it's practical too that's so cool!"

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"It is practical! All right, I'll confine myself to one or two all-nighters a week. Probably. I hope. On second thought, limiting my all-nighters may turn out to be difficult."

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Eelesia makes a sound of agreement, staring at Coventina's bare breasts with a very conflicted expression.

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Giggle.

Yeah, they're going to get along great.

"So... this is actually the first time you haven't limped home with a fallen comrade, isn't it, Laurent. After you get bored of exercising, you wanna celebrate somehow?"

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"Did you have a celebration in mind?"

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"Several, but I think I'd rather let you pick something you'd actually be comfortable with."

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"That's fair. Hmm. ...do you have a place to stay besides our hotel, Sky, I never managed to ask—and Eelesia, same question—I'm wondering if we should all be arranging to live closer together, but my and Coventina's current room is a little small for four. Sorry, that wasn't a celebration idea at all, I think perhaps I might not be very good at celebrating."

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"I... have a place to sleep if you don't want to keep me with you."

Sky does not sound enthused about this in the slightest, though.

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"I'm renting a room at the Highest Lair," she points, the grand gilded mansion being visible across the through-way from the guild hall's cul-de-sac, "it's got more space than I know what to do with and it was the smallest suite they had. If yours is even smaller you can come stay with me instead if you want."

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"I think that sounds like an excellent idea, if everyone's all right with it!"

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Nods all around.

Laurent can check out of the inn they were staying at previously with only a token effort by the innkeeper to convince them to stay.

Eelesia's room at the Highest Lair is indeed spacious. The bathroom is twice as big, with a separate room for the toilet. The bed is three times as big and clad in silk sheets. There is a separate kitchen with the magical equivalent of a refrigerator. There is an entire sitting room with sofas and complementary tea.

Once that's all resolved, they can find the training ring. It's not unlike the various designated sparring areas Laurent has seen while scouting for skills, but unlike those this one is in-doors and has rental equipment. It's a far cry from a modern gym but it seems to exist in a similar spirit.

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"All right, time to repeatedly drive myself to complete physical exhaustion!" he says brightly. "Efficiency!"

God help him, he's developing a catchphrase.

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It's totally his catchphrase at this point.

Coventina offers him a tit.

All three girls have tagged along for this, if only because Eelesia needed to show them the way, Coventina is necessary to the plan, and it would've been cruel to ditch Sky if everyone else was going. So here they all are. Watching.

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He takes his drink and takes a moment to be grateful that the second set of clothes he bought is more exercise-appropriate than the first and then goes forth to do the exhausting activities.

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"Hey can I try some too?" Eelesia asks Coventina. "It's just I've really never heard of Nectar of Sin before and I'm really curious about it, and also your body is very beautiful so doing science that involves putting my mouth on you would be extra nice unless you have boundaries about that?"

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"I have less than no boundaries about that," Coventina assures their new mage. "Science away, and if you get off on it all the better."

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"I see, so the way you think about it is like that. Okay!"

Eelesia peers at Coventina for a moment and then, rather than going for a breast, drops to her knees and dives into the silky folds between her legs, carefully licking up a measured amount of arousal. She pulls back, pulls a stop-watch out of her pocket, and watches it while she pinches the back of her hand.

"Hm!"

She stands up and reaches out to gently squeeze Coventina's nipple, then licks the resulting drop of milk. Stares at stopwatch again.

"Hm!"

She takes a single strand of hair, breaks it, then watches it carefully. It doesn't grow back.

"Hmm!"

Eelesia continues to sample Coventina's nectar in various ways, clearly enjoying herself on both intellectual and base fronts.

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Sky just watches this happen admiringly.

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Laurent is mostly not actively watching them but he does see enough to realize what's going on and be incredibly endeared by it. (Also he hopes she's taking notes, because he wants to hear the results later.)

Eventually the first drink wears off and he has to come back for seconds. "Having fun?" he asks Eelesia. "Learned anything interesting?"

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"Did you know there's an inverse relation between diffusion and regeneration rate? Her sweat lasts the longest and heals the slowest, followed by her milk, then her saliva, and then her vaginal secretions. I even tried a drop of her blood but that didn't work I think the skill isn't meant to be used on vital fluids just the external protective fluids and also milk but I think she's only lactating in the first place because she has the skill!"

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"Oh, that is fascinating! It suggests we should be doubling up, under at least some circumstances—although milk still has the best throughput which I think still makes it optimal for casual use—speaking of which," slurp.

 

He reviews the past fifteen seconds of interaction in his head, and pops off the breast long enough to say, "Hi, Coventina," with a slightly sheepish smile, but then resumes drinking. Because Efficiency.

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Giggle grin. "Hi."

"Actually, we figured out that my fluids mix. They don't stack like separate effects. You'll just get the average of whatever you're exposed to."

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"Oh, yes, we also noticed that method of exposure matters. Her fluids are about half as efficacious just in contact with unbroken skin as when consumed. But also they're anywhere from four to eight times as efficacious when in direct contact with an open wound, depending on the nature of the wound."

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Sluuuurp "nature like how?" slurp.

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"Clean cuts heal almost instantly. Abrasions heal almost instantly. Bruises and the like are much slower, relatively speaking. Still, it's very good healing. Observed behavior is highly similar to the very highest quality of healing potions only it doesn't hurt while it's working like potions do."

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There, that should be enough that he can have another go at exhausting himself. "Enjoy your testing! I'd say you could come talk magical theory with me if you run out of things to test but I expect not to have much breath to spare for conversation. I'd listen, though."

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Over the next two hours, Laurent can make what by mortal standards would be considered absolutely insane gains as he pushes his body and it just keeps healing up in response. When he checks his adventurer card, he'll see that he has gained a single point in Fitness.

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That's pretty great, all things considered!

Now he wants to track now much time that took versus how much it takes to get the next point... although he's already been doing some strenuous activity between being the card and now, so it might not be perfect... hmm.

He approaches his teammates. "I hope I'm not boring anyone. And I thought of a legitimately celebratory activity! I want to cook food. I don't think I'll be much good at it yet so I shouldn't be offering to make everyone dinner but I still want to try it."

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The girls exchange looks.

"We were a little bored."

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"I wasn't going to complain..."

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"Cooking sounds like fun, though! Will the kitchenette in my, I mean our, suite be enough do you think?"

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"We should figure out a better way for me to do this so you don't all have to stand around waiting for me the whole time. And yes, I don't plan on anything too ambitious so the kitchenette should be fine. Maybe I could get one of those pull-up bars... grocery shopping, that's a necessary prerequisite of cooking..."

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"We should check to see if any of us leveled up first, now that the rush is over," Eelesia notes. "Oh and I know where Market Street is, it's not far from Fletcher Row which is right next to Arcanist Avenue where all the good Mage shops are."

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"Good point. Yes, all right, let's go do that."

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Upon checking in with the babyfaced boy behind the counter (Luna appears to be off-duty for once), the party of four discovers that Coventina has hit level three, but she's the only one who managed to level up during the cabbage harvest.

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"Oh, sweet, an actual attack spell, and it sounds like it'd work well with Genesic Echo. Requires fifteen Fitness? You know what, sure."

She rounds out her stats, then buys herself two new skills.

COVENTINA
Level 3

CLASS: "Cleric"
Class Bonus: Sanity - Your sanity stat increases the range of your ranged spells.
Class Bonus: Allure - Your allure stat increases the potency of your spells.

Stat Points: 0

Fitness - 15
Ardor - 19
Grace - 15
Moxie - 17
Sanity - 18
Allure - 20

Skill Points: 0

"Nectar of Sin" (Passive)
Your bodily fluids are a powerful restorative.

"Vital Rush" (Instant, Single-Target, Line-of-Sight)
Causes all damage-over-time or heal-over-time effects on the target to expend themselves immediately for the full damage or healing amount.

"Flesh for Flesh" (Instant, Single-Target, Touch)
Exchange your current health value and physical wounds with the target's.

"Create Water" (Channeled, Touch)
Conjure clean water.

"Rain of Mercy" (Channeled, Local Area)
Summon a cloudburst that rains healing water over a large area.

"Etheric Wardrobe" (Instant, Touch)
Store one complete outfit in immaterial stasis while you are wearing it, and summon it back at will.

"Seafoam Barrage" (Instant, Directional)
Send a wave of turbulent water to smother and disorient any monsters in its path.

"Purify" (Instant, Touch)
Cleanse any elemental medium of contaminants and unravel from it any harmful persistent magic.

ELEMENTS: Water - 100% Affinity | Flesh - 89% Affinity | Spirit - 32% Affinity

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"Very nice! Hmm, so what should we do next? Celebratory cooking, and then another quest tomorrow?"

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"Sounds good to me!"

And Eelesia can lead them to Market Street.

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Market Street is a large, quarter circle covered by awnings, bordered by a half-dozen large and well-staffed shops. A bakery. A spice shop. A red-meat butcher. A produce shop. A white-meat butcher. A dairy.

In the plaza opposite, various smaller stands are clustered in the available space, selling more niche items and sometimes basic cookware.

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Laurent carefully peruses available ingredients and implements, decides on a simple thing to make and a short list of required items, compares against his memory of the kitchenette, finalizes his choices, and buys a modest amount of things. Then it takes his author six hours to fail to decide what food he is even making and eventually give up. It will be such a questionable yet delicious Unspecified.

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Eelesia, it turns out, has apt input on the making of Unspecified. It's actually similar to a local dish her dad's second cook used to make for her when she was little and she has Opinions about various details of the cooking process but she's totally actually not going "suggest" any Unspecified cooking implements or ingredients out of Laurent's hands she's just going to chime in with anecdotes when she sees him doing something wrong different.

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It's actually sort of an interesting extra constraint, to try to get through making the thing without revealing that he learned his recipe on another planet. Lots of vague noncommittal uncertain noises about how he remembers this part being like this but maybe they do it differently where he's from or maybe he's just getting things mixed up. The end result is an odd hybrid of his version and hers, but he quite likes it, although he disclaims that it's not up to his standards before letting anyone else try some.

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All of the girls decide they're fans of his cooking.

Despite the busy day they've had, it's only mid-afternoon, and there are no further pressing matters. How ever will they fill the time?

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"I don't want to bore you all again by suggesting we go back to the gym... I suppose I'd only need Coventina for that, and the rest of you could escape."

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Pfff. "I suppose I'd be a lousy cheat item if I didn't go along with that."

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Headtilt?

Probably an inside joke.

"I wouldn't mind coming along again to watch. I'm still curious about my new party! I want to know you and I want you to know me but we can converse while you train?"

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"I am in favour of you accomplishing those goals! It seemed like I was boring people this morning and I'd rather not repeat the mistake, but if you—either of you," he adds, including Sky, "wants to come despite the risk of boredom, that's fine by me."

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"...I think it was just a little awkward, feeling like we were leaving you out of the conversation?" Sky offers as an explanation. "But, um, it was fine."

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Eelesia pulls Sky into a hug from behind and rests her chin on Sky's head, feeling the smaller girl melt into her arms, in a rather gratifying way actually. Sky seemed to give off an impression of needing intimacy to be thrust upon her, and she was very cute about that: it's hard not to hug her and pet her and treat her like a cuddletoy when she reacts so positively to intimacy like that. Being a good friend to Sky is probably going to be fun.

"Oh I know. I've got this funny card game my dad got me for my birthday and it's mostly verbal so Laurent can participate too."

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"Sounds good to me!"

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Then they can all head back to the training ring and play a dumb card game while Laurent exercises.

There are no dramatic revelations or poignant backstory scenes, but by the time Laurent ekes out one more point of Fitness, it's late evening and none of them feel like strangers to each other, even if that feeling is only a bit less shallow than it was that morning. All three girls are the sort of people who're rather accurate to their first-impressions, and all three of them agree that Laurent is a good party leader and also spend a little while teasing him about having a battle harem.

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"Surely we're all Coventina's battle harem; she's the one who got me into the business in the first place."

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"If it was my battle harem we'd be having an orgy right now," Coventina teases. "Hey, we're all sleeping in Eelesia's bed. Maybe it's her battle harem."

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Sputtering giggle.

"But but it can't be mine! I only joined today!" she laughs.

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"Then by process of elimination I suppose we are Sky's battle harem. Congratulations."

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She knows they're just joking around but she still stares at Laurent a bit like she's just been told she has to perform in front of an audience.

"N-No! Not. Mine? That's," distressed Sky noises. Pout.

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"Sorry. Didn't mean to put you on the spot."

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Small smile. "It's okay. This is... nice... ... ... ...but it's totally your battle harem," she teases shyly.

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"Well, if it's unanimous, then I must accept my fate."

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They all giggle.

"In all seriousness it's pretty obvious that there aren't any pairings of us that aren't sexually compatible. I'm a universal pussy donor, Sky just wants to be our pet, Laurent thinks we're all hot, and unless I miss my guess Eelesia here can have literal nerdgasms."

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Eelesia sporfles.

"I'm not that bad! But I do like you all and I wouldn't mind being close to any of you. Laurent's great! Sky's adorable. And I feel like, like I can just open myself up completely to you, Coventina."

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"I will confess to being a little bit tempted to see if I can't make those literal nerdgasms a reality sometime. But yes, I do like you all, and would like to be close to you. Not necessarily sexually, but I can't say that I mind the idea."

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Sky is blushing at being so bluntly described but it's not like Coventina is wrong. Maybe they'd get her a collar?

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"I don't even know what a literal nerdgasm would be like would it be like an orgasm caused by talking really intensely about something sexy or would it be like having sex while talking about magic or something and using behavior conditioning to associate the feelings with the topics until just the topics could evoke a sexual response purely via the conditioning, would that even work?" Eelesia wonders curiously.

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"I have no idea, but wouldn't it be fun to find out?"

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Giggle. "If it did work, gosh, that would be embarrassing. I talk about magic a lot."

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"Hmm. Perhaps we should find a different subject for you to be nerdy about that's more obscure and less practically useful, so conditioning you to be aroused by it would be less of a problem."

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More giggling, face in her hands. "Laure~ent..."

She lifts her head to smile at him. "Well anywho, are you ready to head back?"

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"I think so. I should check my card and see if my Fitness has gone up again..." Has it?

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It has, but by only one point. Diminishing returns are a bitch.

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Still, that's two points of Fitness that he didn't have to spend stat points on! Very satisfying.

 

On the way back to Eelesia's suite, he finds a quiet moment to say to Coventina, "At some point I think I'd like to have a private conversation with you about—matters pertaining to how we met. I'm not sure when would be a good time."

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"Sure."

She's kind of curious how Eelesia and Sky would react if they didn't bother to hide anything, but it is probably wise to wait on that revelation until they've known each other longer.

"I'll join you in the bath after I distract Eelesia and Sky," she suggests.

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"Sure, all right."

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At the suite, Coventina casts, "Etheric Wardrobe."

And her divine regalia vanishes, leaving her naked. She stretches and then grabs Sky and starts undressing her. "Here, let's get this out of the way..."

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Eelesia watches with undisguised interest.

She wants to be a good friend to her two most lustful party members and watching how they are with each other is fascinatingly informative.

"I see, so, Sky really doesn't like to be asked first?"

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At Coventina's prompting, Sky haltingly answers. "N-No. You can do, whatever you want to me. I just, I just don't want to have... I like it when... I like it when... I like being, aggressively touched? It, it feels good, when my, my body is treated like a, a plaything? Because, because being touched feels really good, even when, especially when, especially when, it's... objectifying?"

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"That's really kind of neat, you know," Eelesia opines. "Oh! Is that why your tanking strategy? Not just because it's efficient for you but you, I bet for you it's kind of a source of stress alleviation and I don't mean that euphemistically I'd just say pent up arousal if that's what I meant, I mean actual stress?"

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Sky ducks her head, blushing, and nods.

Coventina prods her again and she elaborates, "It... lets me be myself. It's, not, it'd be better if..." She pauses. "Monsters are... easy. Simple. Not... they don't... I just kind of wish people who are, y'know, people, would treat me the same way? So that I'd... never have to worry about... needing to ask anyone to touch me, ever? I want you to... feel, entitled, to my body."

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Eelesia nods in understanding! "I see!"

...that understanding rather suggests certain action, here, doesn't it.

She gets up, halts when she remembers she's still fully dressed, doffs her cloak and strips out of her body stocking, then happily presses her naked body up against Sky's and nuzzles her cheek. "I can do that, I think, if that's who you are in your heart."

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Sky gives Eelesia a little melty smile, and eagerly lets herself be pulled into a kiss. Eelesia is more playful than ardent, but that's perfectly fine. She's content to be used however Eelesia will enjoy.

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Coventina slips away while Eelesia and Sky are making out, and as promised, joins Laurent in the bathroom.

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Laurent stays long enough to hear Sky and Eelesia's conversation, but slips away before Coventina does; when she catches up with him, he's just getting into the bath.

"Hello," he says, pausing with soap in hand. "...sorry, this is difficult... I suppose I should ask first, do you think we've been making good progress toward our goals?"

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Coventina slips into the water right behind him. The tub is big enough to swim in, but she wants to offer Laurent some skinship while they're talking.

"That depends. In terms of how we're doing as adventurers, yeah, very good progress. In terms of actually confronting my church? Well, we're going to need to be high level for that anyway, and I never expected to make much progress while we were here in Axel 'cause I specifically picked the place for how Phanessa's religion is dominant here and mine... isn't."

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"All right. That sounds like we're doing well enough."

He takes a moment to get himself settled so that he's sitting next to her, within snuggling range but with the wall of the tub firmly at his back.

"...I want to trust you," he says. "So I should probably begin by explaining that... when we first met, from the moment you said you were a goddess and my soul was in your hands, I was terrified of you. I operated for that entire conversation on the assumption that you could casually obliterate me from existence on a whim, and might do it if I annoyed you too badly. Without that inferred threat I probably would have spent several more hours carefully considering the possibilities before I made my choice of cheat item, but you seemed impatient, and I didn't want to risk upsetting you. I've been gradually learning better as I've gotten to know you, but—that's how things started out, for me."

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Coventina bites her lip, nodding like this is reasonable and unsurprising.

"I may have leaned into that a little. And I am sorry about that. But I really, really hated my job and you, well, here I am. So, again, thank you. It was completely reasonable of you to be terrified of a stranger with that much power over you, but I hope getting to know me has been reassuring that you were never in danger. If you'd outright refused me I still would've made sure you got as much of whatever you wanted as it was in my power to grant, because doing anything less would be stupid and wasteful. And since you did pick me, well, like I've been saying. I'm trying to take being your cheat item seriously."

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He nods slowly.

"...that's... well, understandable, given the situation you were in. I'm... still trying to loosen the instinctive reaction that whenever you seem to expect me to do something without asking further questions I should do it and not ask any further questions. That's partly a lingering effect from being so afraid of you at first and partly just... how I am all of the time with everyone, I think. I... feel very out of my depth, in this world. I don't like feeling out of my depth. I don't like... feeling like the person I'm supposed to be would already know all the things I'm trying so hard to figure out, but I can't ask or I'll disappoint people by revealing I'm not who they thought I was."

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She pats his thigh.

"I know it's not as easy as saying that you won't disappoint me by asking questions, that you can and should ask questions, that Eelesia is turned on by your questions," smirk, "but, well, I'm definitely saying it."

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"Okay," he says.

 

"...when you were telling me I'd made a mistake with you and Sky—you used the word 'aftercare', and it was like—like hearing the phrase 'theoretical physics' for the first time, and—trying to say 'wait, hang on, please back up to the part of the conversation where it's established that that's a field of study, this opens up possibilities I didn't know existed,' but the person you're talking to doesn't understand how utterly ignorant of all related phenomena you are, so you can't get them to explain—sorry, that analogy got away from me a little. Um. It's... it sounds, from the way you were talking, like there is, maybe not a field of study about this, but a vocabulary. A... store of common knowledge. I have no idea what is in that store of common knowledge but I think a lot of it is probably important."

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That conversation kind of was left hanging wasn't it. She really just wanted to go to sleep but she should've brought it up again in the morning but also has he really never...

"Laurent, the world you're from. Did it not have BDSM?"

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"I might have heard that acronym before as many as a handful of times. I have a vague idea of what it means. I don't think I could tell you what it stands for."

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Coventina takes a breath. That's not as bad as it could be. For a moment there she thought he'd been misfiled or something.

"The basic idea is that some sexual desires are dangerous to fulfill 'in the wild' so to speak. You've heard the way Sky talks. She almost certainly fantasizes about being raped and enslaved. And I think you already grok the difference between actually raping and enslaving her, and being her friend in a way that sort of looks like raping and enslaving her but only because her desires put making-her-happy and giving-her-pleasure into that shape? BDSM stands for four specific things-like-that, but the point of it is to be a codified set of guidelines and," she gives him a nod, "a set of vocabulary to enable that sort of relationship, which is more or less standardized in your sort of world of origin, which is why I assumed it would sound like plain language to you and not jargon. Sorry."

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"...yes, all right, I think I see what you mean. I want... well. I want to know how to be her friend. And your friend, and Eelesia's friend, although I think in both those cases there's less—" He waves a hand vaguely, scattering droplets of water across the surface of the bath. "Less of the sort of thing where I feel terrifyingly, dangerously out of my depth."

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"I do want to do what I can to make you feel safe with me. And I can teach you all the BDSM vocabulary if you think that would be helpful. I want to be helpful to you in general."

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"I don't think the vocabulary is exactly what I need, so much as the... concepts behind it? When there's a word for something why is there a word for it, what is its... place in the world? But the vocabulary is a pretty reasonable way to get at the concepts."

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"Right," Coventina agrees.

"Well, we can start with aftercare. The basic concept is that, often, after going through an intense experience, one needs a hug. This is often true even if the intense experience was a positive one, and compoundedly true if the intense experience was intensely positive sexually but rode on top of enough adrenaline that there's a crash afterward. Cuddling and similar activities for the express purpose of treating adrenaline crash and or comforting the parts of you that were scared so they don't get in the way of the parts of you that had a great fucking time, is aftercare. The care that comes after a scene. A scene being the actual dangerous-desire-fulfilling-sex part."

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"Oh! Yes, I think I see how it fits together now. Thank you."

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Oh good!

"Does that mean that your curiosity is satisfied for now or does that mean I should give you the whole lecture?"

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"I would like to hear the whole lecture!"

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Coventina begins with the basic concepts, from the often unintuitive symmetry in even the most extreme or weirdest desires, between giving and receiving, a reciprocity that cannot be forced or faked, to the minutia of negotiation and safewords and best practices as understood by typical earths, and Coventina's own opinions on where those fall short or go too far.

She does her best to go breadth-first and not drill down into anything specific, lest they spent all night in the bath, and focus on the why rather than on the what. This is about giving Laurent the context to understand Coventina's cultural references, not teaching him to blend in at an earthly BDSM dungeon, and she holds to that firmly as she formulates her explanations.

She uses Sky in several hypothetical and not-so-hypothetical examples. "She doesn't want to put on a collar and be our cherished sex slave for a few hours and then take it off to go back to being just our valued party member the rest of the time, my read on her is that she wants to be our valued party-member-but-with-sex-slave-ish-boundaries all the time, and so the whole 'scene' concept doesn't really apply in her case and a lot of the," vague hand gesture, "narrative paraphernalia that can go into scenes doesn't work."

Coventina is pretty sure she isn't leaving anything out, but its a lot to condense, and also to condense in such a specific, tailored way. If she's doing it right, Laurent won't know a lot in concrete terms but he'll have a vastly better idea of what he doesn't know.

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"Thank you," he says, eventually. "I feel much better equipped to understand where you're coming from."

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"If I ever say anything else that it seems like I expect you to understand, and you don't, you can always make me explain that too," Coventina asserts.

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"I will do my best to remember that. My best may not be very good, but I'll do it."

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"Do you want a hug or am I still too scary? Speak now, for you are starting to prune and our time to fulfill that ecchi trope in particular grows short this night," she says in faux-portentous teasing tones.

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He giggles behind his hand, and hugs her.

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Yaaaaay skinship grope.

She, at least, is immune to pruning. (There isn't a particular mechanism for that but she's not going to question water-goddess fiat when it is on her side.)

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Snug!

"All right, off to bed with us. Well, off to bed with me, I won't presume to tell you where to sleep." He gets out of the bath and starts drying off.

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"I'm hardly going to do anything that discourages sleeping in an entire-team naked cuddlepile every night."

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Eelesia and Sky are on the bed, half under the covers, making out languidly, though Eelesia has both of Sky's hands pinned over her head.

"Oh you're done. I was wondering if you'd fallen asleep or were having sex too or something, you were in there a while. We're all sharing the bed, right? It sounded like that's what we'd do and I think it would be nice."

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"I also think that would be nice!"

Although it is not quite going to be a naked cuddlepile because he does, in fact, put on underwear before going to bed.

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Well, he's the only one.

She can roll over so Sky's on top of her and then snuggle in to Laurent's side, because yeah she does in fact like him a lot she opened with unrestrained nerdbabble and he understood her perfectly and babbled right back and if that's not grounds for a crush Eelesia doesn't know what is.

All this warmth and soft skin and snuggling is so super comfy and she really really hopes this becomes a regular thing.

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"You want to be in the middle? Or should I glomp Eelesia instead?" Coventina asks Laurent quietly.

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"The middle sounds like a good place to be."

He snuggles up to Eelesia and Sky.

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Is that progress? That might be progress.

Coventina cuddles up to him, squishing him between her own naked body and Eelesia's.

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It's very cozy and no one is having any ongoing medical emergencies. He drifts off into a sound and restful sleep.

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And a new day dawns without incident. For once.

How would Laurent like to spend it? His party is ahead of the curve on leveling, they've got enough money to be comfortable for months, and of the available quests at the guild hall, none seem urgent. (In fact, the bounty board is looking a little sparse. Adventurers, flush with cash from the cabbage harvest and excited to break in new gear, have been questing more eagerly than usual today.)

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He nevertheless reads through all the quests left on the bounty board after breakfast, just to see what's out there.

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There's one quest that is covered in warnings, with a level minimum of five.

There's what appears to be a rather old quest, on wood rather than paper. It was previously covered up by other, newer quests, but there appears to be an apothecary on Arcane Avenue that is offering 10,000 Lake per intact monster egg delivered.

Over here is a slightly less old-looking notice, on paper but surrounded by a high-quality frame. Level requirement: 3. The alraunes in the southern hills have begun their migration, as evinced by the cabbage harvest. For the health of the land, it is requested that male adventurers travel to and inseminate the remaining unpollinated alraunes so that they may join the migration. 5,000 Lake per alraune.

Also of interest, there appears to be a new quest, also requiring Level 3, offering 50,000 Lake per pound of drider silk, to be delivered directly to The Succubus Cafe on Whisper Street. There is a domesticated drider colony a day's walk to the west; this appears to be mostly a fetch quest.

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"Well, that's certainly a selection. Thoughts on which quests seem appealing, anyone? The drider silk is offering a lot of money, but I've never tried inseminating alraunes and maybe I could get ten of them in less than a day and then that would be more lucrative..."

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"The alraunes are closest," Coventina notes, peering at the egg quest. "Was this here the whole time? This was here the whole time, wasn't it."

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Peer. "Oh, I know that place. I think they closed? Maybe they just forgot to take down the notice."

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"We could go look at the apothecary and see if they still exist and are still backing their monster egg quest. If anyone thinks we should be selling them monster eggs."

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Blush. It's really very obvious who would be getting egged, if someone in this party is going to be getting egged on purpose.

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"Sure! Let's go check it out. Either way though I think Coventina's right that the alraunes are the most convenient except we wouldn't be much help with that one besides guarding you while you're busy and spotting for you in case something goes wrong but I don't mind if you don't."

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"I would definitely appreciate both the spotting and the guarding, and perhaps also an explanation of how inseminating alraunes is generally supposed to go. All right, let's check out the apothecary and then go look for alraunes and perhaps, depending on circumstances, acquire an opportunistic monster egg on the way back."

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"I've never seen an alraune up close but I've read about them and they're lure-types and really docile by monster standards so probably it will be easy. Okay! This way!"

She leads them to a street that has a very wizard-y aesthetic and then to a small door crammed between two larger shops.

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[GONE FISHING]

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"That does not look like a door that will reliably pay us 10,000 Lake apiece for monster eggs."

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It really doesn't does it.

None of the girls disagree.

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"Alas. Well, off to inseminate alraunes, I suppose." Did they remember to grab the quest on their way out of the guild hall? He double-checks his card.

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Coventina swung by the counter to register them for that one just in case, especially since they probably won't be the only party doing it and also how would you bring back proof on this one.

"We're set."

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"Excellent."

To the forest! Probably? That's where the alraunes are, right? He's pretty sure...

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Wooded hills. It's not quite a forest, but the trek to get there takes them up a short hiking track into a secluded grove.

The earth here is churned up in blobs and trails, but after a little wandering, they find their first alraune.

Imagine something the approximate shape of a pumpkin, only soft and green, ringed by pink flower petals. Out of the top of this, grows the upper half of a nubile girl, soft and inviting, bare breasts and open arms. Her face is a work of art. Literally. Painted in pigmentation onto plant-skin, lacking true eyes, mouth, or nose, not meant to be convincing, just alluring. A half-dozen glistening slits sit prominently on her lower body, arranged in a ring around her circumference, each ready and waiting, at the perfect height and angle for a man to fall face-first into her boobs while he fucks her.

There is a scent in the air. A soothing, calming, welcoming aroma.

The alraune's waist rotates within her lower body, allowing her to face them and reach out in welcome toward Laurent.

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Well that's sort of unsettling but sure, he can interact with this setup in the obvious and straightforward fashion.

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"How do you want us arranged?" Coventina asks. "Close? Far? Making a perimeter? Standing by to help you? Standing by to 'help' you?"

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"Close enough to help me out if something goes terribly wrong somehow, far enough that if Sky has to distract a monster they won't end up going through me to get to her?" he suggests. "Making a perimeter seems reasonable although I might be being overly cautious."

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Eelesia puts herself on watch duty, and suggests that Sky back up against that tree, so she can see everything that's going on and jump in if necessary without getting snuck-up on herself. That leaves Coventina on emergency Laurent-yoinking.

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The alraune waits patiently while Laurent undresses. Then again, waiting patiently seems to be its signature move.

It reaches out as he approaches, one hand finding his head and gently petting his hair, as if by rote.

The yonic slit in front of him is juicy and inviting, slick and fleshy and exotic and as warm as any human.

But even an alraune isn't entirely passive. The moment the tip of his cock slips inside, the fleshy tunnel bulges, a terrifically powerful suction slurping his full length all the way into her, yanking Laurent's hips forward to smack flush against the plump plant-flesh of the alraune's lower body. Creases in that lower body reveal themselves as seams: two large, thick flaps of smooth flesh rise up and extend to cup his hips and curl behind him, grabbing tightly to his butt to hold him in place, their inner surfaces textured like a thousand fingers.

With his hips secured, the girl-body part gently tugs his head to rest on her breasts, continuing to pet his hair. Meanwhile, below, the suction on his cock relaxes, and he can feel the inner sheath of flesh wrapped around his cock slide slickly over his length as it moves deeper into the lower body. And then the suction pulses, hard, making him feel the weight of flesh pulling on his dick even as that pull slams the tight sheath of flesh down to the root of his cock, compressing there against his pelvis since there certainly isn't any room for so much as a millimeter of his cock to become exposed during this process. As the pulses of suction drag that inner flesh up and down his cock, milking him, it continuously sheathes him fully from root to tip even as it slides more than the full length of his shaft with each stroke.

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It's sort of a spatially fascinating sensation and he keeps getting distracted from matters at hand by trying to picture the mechanics in more detail. No, Laurent, don't condition yourself to become aroused by topology, we've been over the pitfalls of this practice. Think about something that is normal and reasonable to think about in this situation. The automatic hairpetting is kind of nice? A solidly adequate simulacrum of coziness. Maybe later be should solicit hairpets from his inexplicable battle harem. Oh, there's a useful thing to picture while trying to fuck a plant. Conditioning himself to be aroused by thoughts of close contact with his party members seems under the circumstances to be a totally reasonable idea. He should think about that and not about how he would design a hydraulic system to emulate the plant's current behaviours. Is there magic involved? Could you do this using the same principles of articulation present in a Venus flytrap if your energy usage constraints were a little looser than the poor flytrap's, or—no, wait, back to mental images of being snuggled up like this with Coventina petting his hair—

Eventually, he successfully inseminates the alraune.

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The behavior of the alraune doesn't change at all in response to his first orgasm.

Fortunately or unfortunately, he's also still considerably hornier than he might expect to be after an orgasm, and he's not going soft as the alraune continues to milk him.

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Coventina notices this, and immediately has a guess.

"Huh. It has six pussies. There's only one of you so maybe you have to cum six times before it can migrate?"

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"I hope I'm not undersupplying the poor thing with variety, in that case."

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"Pretty sure the quest was posted by the guild itself, so probably Luna, and my impression of her is that she wouldn't leave out salient information like that."

She pats his back. It's subtle, from the outside, but she can see the visible hints of the alraune's inner suckling pulsations, and hopes Laurent is having more fun than he's letting on about, with those.

"Want some Nectar?"

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He smiles and leans into her hand a little. "Sure."

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Mixing the healing fluids of a goddess with whatever mild aphrodisiac the alraune is putting out has pretty much the expected effect. Laurent's sexual stamina is restored nigh-instantly, without resetting his sensitivity. Bad sensitivity is wiped away while good sensitivity remains unimpeded.

The alraune continues to milk him at the same steady, irresistible pace.

He started this with his mana untouched, but still, by the third or fourth orgasm, he'll notice the lingering loss of control in his limbs when he cums, like the pleasure is stealing that control and then not giving it back as promptly as it should.

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"Interesting," he remarks. "I can see how this turns out to be a self-limiting activity. Can't wait until I get my next skill point and land that infinite mana hack."

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Heh. "I will be very surprised if it is actually an infinite mana hack, but yeah."

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His sixth orgasms leaves him slumping down, and Coventina has to catch him as the alraune releases him and lets him fall.

The plant-girl part stretches toward the sky, then slurps down, vanishing into an extra-large slit on the lower body's top. The earth rumbles. Then, the flower petals rip upwards, reavealing roots underneath. Roots which start slithering and churning. Slowly, the alraune starts moving away, sliding over the ground at a steady walking pace.

There is a hollow in the earth under where the alraune was previously planted. It is not empty. A dozen or so of the cabbage monsters and their compatriots spill up out of the hole.

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"Greater Solar Bolt."

And those monsters immediately die to plasma blasts before they can get their bearings.

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"Thank you, Eelesia! All right, let's go turn this in."

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"Right! I think we could probably find another one if you want to but there's no minimum on this quest so one alraune at a time is fine too. How did it feel? Was it as gentle as alraunes are said to be? I mostly wasn't watching until the end 'cause I had to keep an eye out but I think I only heard you moan maybe once?"

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"It was certainly gentle. Overall not my cup of tea, I don't think, but not outright unpleasant either. Also I kept getting distracted by trying to figure out how the insides of an alraune work mechanically. There was a lot of complex movement going on in there! Anyway, I don't want to do another one without waiting for my mana to replenish first; mana drain is an uncomfortable and concerning experience."

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Nod nod nod.

"I haven't read about how the insides of an alraune work, though somebody must know that kind of study has definitely been done on many notable monster types but what did it do that made you curious?"

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He pauses in the middle of getting dressed to try to describe the movements. This results in a shirtless Laurent with his pants hanging precariously off his hips, moving his hands in the air in a half-successful effort to capture the complexity of the alraune's internal stimulation machinery. "—and I only barely know anything about plant mobility and probably the magic affects it in all sorts of ways I haven't thought of but it was just so spatially fascinating to experience—" His pants fall down. He looks down, laughs, then pulls them back up. "Excuse me."

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Laurent is so great and Eelesia will happily speculate about biomechanical topology and how it might integrate magical motility to produce the sensations Laurent experienced all the way back to town. Her own leading theory is that the pulling sensation, as evicted by how it physically sucked him in at the start, implies that it was functional and not just stimulatory, which further implies that a pneumatic driver was the figurative backbone of the milking action.

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"That seems very likely! Do you suppose someone's written a book on it that we could find if we looked hard enough? I suppose probably chasing down rare books about monsters is not the most efficient use of our time but it does sound fun... oh, I got distracted, were there any harvestable bits of those cabbage monsters and if so should we have brought them back and if so did someone think of that while I was busy thinking about monster anatomy?"

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"Um."

Sky and Coventina have been following behind, watching this conversation and smiling about it.

Sky is bottomless (with Coventina's hand on her ass), her metal skirt once more turned into a basket. There is one cabbage and several miscellaneous vegetables piled inside.

Sky makes a small gesture with the basket. "For lunch?"

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"Thank you very much. I should really get better at maintaining basic situational awareness even when I'm having a conversation about something interesting. Sure, all right, I can think of something to make with those. No promises about quality yet, I need more practice."

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Eelesia's kitchen turns out to have all of what's needed to fry up that selection of vegetables into a tasty medley.

Eelesia recalls a bookshop that might know which other bookshop might have anatomical treatises on notable monsters. While Laurent is cooking she can head down that way to find out. She plays bookshop-tag for half an hour and finds out that there is a known book that contains a detailed anatomical study of an alraune but it's not in stock. It's not a very expensive book so Eelesia requests that the bookshop put in an order.

And then she's back in time to enjoy lunch with her party.

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Lunch with the party is good! The food is much better than Laurent is willing to admit. Also he gets to talk to Eelesia about Nerd Topics.

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He does!

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This is, all in all, a pretty reasonable way to spend one's time.

After lunch he wants to work out a bit more, and then as afternoon winds into evening he makes dinner. Overnight he snuggles up in bed with his battle harem, and in the morning after breakfast he checks the quest board, which is only barely more interesting than it was yesterday. Another alraune insemination, another lunch, another workout session, another dinner. If they can find anything more useful to do, he's all in favour of doing it, but until then he's content.

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The days pass as they settle into their routine.

It takes him three full days to get another Fitness point, and then a full week after that to get another. His body is hard and muscular now, like he's been exercising for months, but, as Coventina explains, the Fitness stat is broader that just how much you can lift or how many reps you can do, and the more esoteric parts don't respond to exercise at the same rate muscles do.

The alraunes slowly get harder to find as adventurers clear them out.

Each night, when they're all in bed together, the lewd slowly escalates. Outside of their shared bed, Coventina and Eelesia both take advantage of Sky whenever the whim strikes, and Eelesia in particular impulsively kisses Laurent a few times when they're nerding out together. In their shared bed, all three girls, without explicitly deciding to, let Laurent set the pace. On some nights, when he's receptive, they'll fuck each other in front of him, beside him, on top of him one time. Coventina encourages but doesn't push. Eelesia is just enthusiastic about him in general but she's less horny than the other two. And of course Sky is just happy to be used as a sex toy by the others.

Killing the occasional incidental monster during their daily tasks (such as the ones that come up from under an alraune) gets Laurent up to Level 3 during this time, as well. This is a comfortable level to be, in Axel. At one point Luna explains how the leveling curve gets really steep after Level 5, so that's usually where adventurers who aren't dedicating their life to traveling in search of dangerous monsters and quests plateau.

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When he levels, he puts two more points into Sanity to bring it to 20, marvels at his thirteen Fitness points where once he had only nine, and takes the skills Stormheart and Mystic Eye.

He's happy to snuggle up with/beside/under the girls while they make out or have sex. Eelesia's kisses make him blush, and on one memorable occasion squeak like a startled rodent, but although he's usually too surprised and/or distracted to do much in the way of kissing back, it's clear he feels positively about them.

For lunch and dinner most days, and occasionally for breakfast, he cooks for everyone. He slowly lets go of the fiction that his food isn't good enough to cook for people, and plans meals without the extra disclaimers about how they won't be up to his standards; relatedly, once he's had a chance to get up to speed, it turns out he's a really good cook. Dinner with Laurent is superior to the fare at most available restaurants.

He thinks he would like to level past 5. He brings it up, when Lucy mentions that it's known to be difficult. "I wouldn't want to drag any of you into a lifestyle you found uncomfortable, of course, but I don't intend to hit a plateau in two levels and stay there."

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She could probably scheme harder than she is about getting Laurent to stop wearing underwear to bed. She's bought leather cuffs, silk rope, custom-tailored blindfolds, and earplugs for herself, Eelesia and Sky, but they've sat unused in the bedside drawer during actual bedtime, and only Sky's have seen much use at all.

The fact of the matter is, this still feels like a vacation, and Coventina is enjoying the days of just living life. Guilt about neglecting the mission is tickling at the edges of her mind, but... she completely and viscerally understands why her pre-Laurent champions all abandoned the mission to do their own thing. The temptation to do the same herself is there.

But if Laurent isn't going to falter, it would just be embarrassing to slow him down on the mission she gave him in the first place. And also, it really does need doing. Her church has become an abomination and no matter how much fun she's having she can't ignore that.

 

"You know I'm with you," Coventina tells Laurent, and the double meaning is present but there's also some genuine loyalty in there.

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"If we want to focus on leveling up we can plan out a hunting trip to find a locally optimal set of monsters to focus on banishing. Oh, didn't that anatomy book mention something about - "

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A massive KA-BOOM rattles the air.

It sounds like it came from the north gate.

Adventurers rush out to see what the fuck happened.

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Laurent is among those adventurers, although he makes sure to stick by his team rather than sprinting off ahead of them.

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As the crowd bulges out of the gates, they're met by a figure seated upon a throne of flesh. He's huge, tall and muscled like a body-builder, and he sits in all of his nude glory upon a seat formed of a dozen or so nude girls. His arm-rests are licking at his cock from either side in a lustful fugue.

"Heathens!" he bellows in a mighty voice. "Rejoice! For the shackles of inhibition which bind you to shame and ill priority shall this day be struck free from you. I, High Priest Olando of the Church of the First Axiom, have learned of your plight!"

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An adventurer at the head of the pack, a Ranger by the look of her equipment, shouts out in response.

"We're good, thanks! The City of Axel is under the protection of the Church of the Lake! You are not welcome here, High Priest!"

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Olando the High Priest waves his hand dismissively.

"So a slave to the tyranny of the lesser goddess would say!" he bellows. "But your suffering is plain to see! You have all been warped in heart and soul away from the one ultimate truth! That endless sexual bliss is the birthright of every human, and all thoughts otherwise blasphemes against not just the goddess, but every living soul in existence! So do not fear! I am here only to cleanse your minds so that you may join with the holy orgy!"

He stands, and raises his hand to the sky. "Sacred Greater World Gate! Sacred Greater Frenzy Nova!"

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Coventina is angry enough that's she's actually growling. Twisting her own words into a vile mockery of the all that she stands for. How dare they.

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The adventurer who spoke before nocks an arrow and fires, but one of the throne-girls jerks up, producing a magical shield. The arrow detonates against the shield with enough force to knock Olando off his throne and send the girls making up the throne sprawling into a big pile, but it's too late to stop the spells.

A light shines down from above. It washes over the city, and anyone it touches is instantly struck by a violent, overwhelming urge to fuck. And then a portal the size of a city block rends open the sky, and thousands upon thousands of oily black tentacles spill out and rain down across Axel as she watches in dismay.

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This... is more sexually aroused than Laurent has ever been in his life. In either of his lives.

He almost can't process it; he freezes up, at first, because—there isn't an action connected to this desire, there's no reflection in the outer shell of his persona for the fire suddenly raging within.

He looks to his teammates, because his instinct by now whenever anything new and unexpected happens is to look to his teammates.

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Sky exists. She's dripping down her thighs and squirming a little but that's not all that different from how she normally is.

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Coventina is fingering herself with one hand while the entire rest of her continues to glare murderously at the fallen form of Olando. She glances over and -

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Eelesia collides softly with Laurent, her face filling his field of vision, panting with desire as she kisses him with a burning hunger.

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"Gah! Everyone everyone - fuck! The tentacles! Avoid the tentacles! Fuck if you're going to fuck but only each other!!!"

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Despite the blast of magical lust that has thoroughly distracted the mass of adventurers, enough of them are single and/or lucid enough to hear the warning and start screaming as they fail to avoid the tentacles.

It's not clear immediately what the tentacles are doing beyond raping everything they touch, but there isn't room to wait and see because the tentacles are everywhere and Laurent's party is about to be caught by them as well.

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Kissing Eelesia is the most important thing in the NO IT ISN'T

PRIORITY INTERRUPT

He somehow manages to pull his mouth away from her long enough to "Genesic Echo—Fulmindash—"

—and the lightning sketches out a pentagram around the party and then deposits him approximately back where he started only now everything is much brighter. He sticks his hand into a lingering bolt and squints past the haze and tries very hard to tell his body that it can shut up about how much it wants sex because they have bigger problems. Is the lightning helping at all with warding off the tentacles or is he going to need more than that? Also, how's that infinite mana hack doing?

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He's converting lightning from his own spell back into mana. That is definitely not an infinite mana hack, but it is noticeably slowing the drain of Genesic Echo.

The tentacles ignore the lightning completely, but when they enter the radius of Genesic Echo, they smear, like a computer rendering the next frame to the screen without clearing the pixel buffer first. The smeared slabs of tentacle-reality get extremely in their own way. Two problems: One, all this smearing is increasing the mana cost of Genesic Echo rapidly. Two, it's rapidly obstructing their view out of the radius.

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Eelesia does not have the self-control for this.

As soon as it is clear that Laurent isn't going to ravish her, she rips a hole in her body suit's crotch, grabs Sky by the hair, and shoves the smaller girl's face into her crotch.

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"Need a better infinite mana hack," he mutters under his breath, squinting at the tentacles. "Also need better tactical options." There are so many things he could be doing right now that his body really wants to do and he is doing NONE OF THEM, THANK YOU, not even jerking off while watching Eelesia go at it with Sky, in fact especially not that one because he needs one hand to shove into lightning and the other to hold his sword just in case the sword turns out to help. "Coventina? Would getting Sky to pull these things be a very good idea or a very bad one, do you think—what are they—" Yes, think about NON-EROTIC SUBJECTS like MAGICAL THEORY and NOT about Eelesia's very pretty mouth.

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"I don't know! They're not monsters! Monsters don't... this!" She gestures wildly with her free hand at the reality-smearing. "That was a World Gate! It could be anything!"

What can she do. She can heal. Do these tentacles count as harmful magic? She thinks maybe they do, maybe even more fundamentally than anything native to the world.

...she has zero Air affinity. This is going to suck.

"Trying something!" She wrenches her hand away from her pussy and slaps it onto the vibrating unflesh of the nearest smeared tentacle. "Purify!"

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Olando brushes off the slight indignity and commands the nearest tentacles to serve him. They bring before him a random, nameless, female adventurer, clad in the tatters of armor. She struggles against the tentacles, but is helpless. She begs him to stop, threatens, yells, but, "Know peace, my slut, for with my blessed cock I shall heal your mind of this inhibition, this heresy. And perhaps," he says as the tentacles remove her Ring of Fertility Suppression, "gift you with the next generation of initiate."

With a self-righteous smirk, he thrusts into her.

 

 

Suddenly, the tentacles evaporate in an expanding sphere as Coventina's influence spreads out from the point of contact. Mana exhaustion burns through her body almost immediately as the atmosphere absorbs her power. A massive hollow space in the tentacles forms, big enough to encompass the whole crowd of adventurers and a large section of wall. It's enough to buy them a little time and space, but the tentacles are raping the entire city, screams and moans of varying affects echoing through the walls.

The adventurer that Olando was helping himself to falls free with a moan of pleasure... and a vicious uppercut into his balls. This does less damage than one would hope, but it occupies him long enough for her to scramble away and find her weapons.

 

Many more adventurers are freed, at least for the moment. The endless black tentacles do not immediately return to the cleared space, but regrowth is slowly encroaching.

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He drops the Genesic Echo since it's no longer helping and does not in fact give him infinite mana.

"Okay, that's a start, but yikes," he says. "Is this an ongoing effect, can it be shut off at the source?" Wait, can Coventina even answer or is she too exhausted already? Who was that adventurer who was yelling at everyone to stay away from the tentacles, maybe she can answer his questions, either directly or by taking actions which he can observe and make inferences from...

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Coventina is on her knees, unable to stand, but she's not completely incapacitated yet.

"Can't see..." she gasps. The portal, if it is still there, is obscured by all the tentacles. "Eelesia! EELESIA!!! Is, World Gate, channeled?"

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Sky is doing such a good job of keeping Eelesia afloat on the roaring torrent of lust that's coursing through her right now, but she hears the question and her mind slips a couple of times before catching on the correct bit of trivia.

"Y-Yeah! Channeled. World Gate is channeled!"

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The outspoken adventurer noted the point of origin of the clear space (and also who cast it) and runs over to them just as Eelesia is speaking. "She's right! If we kill Olando it'll close!"

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Oh no he looked at Eelesia when she spoke and this was a mistake. Now he keeps having thoughts. About subjects other than handling the ongoing crisis. Subjects like kissing Eelesia. No nope come on focus

It's not exactly voluntary, but it's not exactly involuntary either. There's just—a moment—when it fully properly occurs to him that he does not have time right now to deal with the distraction of being so turned on, that this is important and he can't let himself be distracted—and then something shifts in his head, disconnects, like a gear train coming uncoupled, and his body is just as turned on as it was a second ago but he no longer has to spend half his attention trying very hard not to think about fucking his teammates senseless.

Right then.

"So how do we kill Olando?"

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"I... I don't know. He's level twenty. We might not have anything that can kill him. And I bet he's siphoning mana from his... congregation, back there." She points at the dozen or so naked nubile girls who've arranged themselves in a neat row of slave-poses, her hand shaking a little in time with the shaking of her legs. "We can't wait him out even if I could matchmake the entire city in the next thirty seconds."

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"What is all this actually doing—I ask because depending on how bad it is if he wins, it might be worth taking out the congregation just to deprive him of the mana—what have we got, can we throw his own tentacles at him or will that just make everything worse—Coventina, do you have enough left in you to cast Flesh for Flesh, we could use that dirty trick I came up with for taking out a much more formidable opponent—"

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"I have... enough, for at least one Flesh for Flesh," Coventina says, her voice ragged but with a vicious edge. "Ram you sword through my heart, then make sure I'm close enough to touch him before I pass out... his level won't mean shit."

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"Fuck that's hardcore," she says, giving Coventina a knowing look. "It might work. We'll have to do it fast, though. This thing he's summoned, I think it's the Tentacles of the Twilight Ouroboros. A legend from an adjacent world that eats memories and then manifests from those memories. The Twilight Ouroboros is tentacles that form from memories of tentacles, an endless loop, see? But it overwrites all your other memories as it feeds, eventually leaving a blank slate ripe for indoctrination or enslavement or whatever. Empty shells with only that one, singular memory to define them."

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"Horrifying—arguably worth taking out the congregation—try this first—what's the fastest we can get her there, do you have any accelerated movement options that take passengers? I don't think my dash does."

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"I don't and... fuck, I think he's figured out where that huge Purify came from. Quick, here."

She lays a hand on Coventina's head, and mana flows from her into the goddess.

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Coventina stands. She shoots the adventurer a suspicious glance. The other girl looks familiar somehow and that was a lot of mana for a mortal to just offload like that.

But that is hardly the urgent matter in front of them.

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That would be the huge, nude, statuesque man stomping toward them.

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"Oh good," he says, with a slight smile that is not all that different from his usual slight smile and yet somehow still deeply unsettling in context. "Problem solved. I'll defend you until I don't, then."

He puts up the Genesic Echo and the lightning pentagram again. He doesn't expect it to be much more than a mild nuisance, but that's not the point, the point is to make it look like he doesn't want the big scary man touching his healer.

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Eelesia, noticing that they're more directly under attack than previously (and somewhat saner after cumming on Sky's face), musters the willpower to pull a dazed and glazed Sky off of her pussy and draw her wands.

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Olando walks right through the lightning, only flinching a little, a sickly green spell of some kind gathering in his hand.

His eyes lock on Coventina, and there's a flicker of surprise on his face as he takes her in. He slows, holds his glowing hand behind his back and forces a smile onto his face.

"Such prowess! Come, my slut, let me get a look at you. Yes. Yes. Perhaps you have more potential than the rest of these heathens. Repent of your prudish companions, my slut, and I shall spare you from judgement. Join me in showing them the Truth of the First Axiom, and you shall be rewarded!"

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Coventina almost spits in his face. Almost. It's a very close thing.

She just barely manages to master her rage before it can show, instead twisting her growl into a fearful, "You'll, you'll spare me if I rape my friends?"

       "Heresy and folly, my slut, there is no sin in the defiance of evil! And defiance of sex is, inevitably, evil."

Coventina would agree except for how this is NOT WHAT THAT MEANS and she wants this twisted asshat to suffer for what he's done to her ideology.

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Ugh, the worst part of tactics against a language-using opponent is the part where you have to deceive them about things and can't just openly make suggestions to your teammates. This would be so much simpler if he could call for a distraction from someone who isn't him.

It would also be simpler if his dash took passengers, but it doesn't.

It would also be simpler if he could loop a few dashes through the man to distract him before throwing a stabbed Coventina in his face, but whatever that garbage is he's holding, Laurent doesn't want to touch it, and while he could probably manage to dash through him once without intersecting the mystery blob of badness, he doesn't want to trust that probability any more than he has to.

So. What are the options he has? What are the strategies not ruled out?

...looks like it's gonna be acting. Dammit, he hates acting. It's so—shallow. Coventina probably isn't any happier with it, though, and she's doing all right so far.

"How dare you," he hisses furiously, as though he's forgotten the greater threat completely in the face of her wavering loyalty. "How could you even think of doing something like that!" Rush her now, or draw it out, what are the considerations—he wants the introduction of stabbed Coventina to this man to look as little like an attack as possible while maximizing the chance that she successfully makes contact while conscious—draw it out it is. "Come and get me, then, if that's what your loyalty is worth!"

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It is so good that Laurent is good at this.

"You think you're worth this?! Why would I sacrifice myself for you when you've spent so long neglecting me?! I'M DONE WAITING FOR YOU!!!"

       "Yes! Yes! The spirit of the goddess is with you! He has sinned against your very humanity by refusing you!"

Coventina lunges, hand thrust forward. Seafoam Barrage! Has to cast silently; if Olando doesn't hear the skill name he won't immediately recognize it even if he knows what it does.

A wall of white-green bubbles hits Laurent with all the force of a mild gust of wind, passing over him and obscuring him just long enough for him to...

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...run her through with his sword and then kick her off it with a snarl of very believable rage.

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Okay. Ow.

The thing they don't tell you about getting stabbed in the heart is that the heart is actually very difficult to convince to stop beating. Those powerful muscles do not stop just because a sharp piece of metal is impaling them. All the blood that's not going into her arteries just makes the heart think it needs to beat even harder.

Three seconds. That's how long she has once her heart stops. But the pain is so bad she might not even make it that far.

She feels startled arms catch her, and she's forgotten why but she still hisses, "Flesh for Flesh."

And suddenly, she's fine.

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And suddenly, Olando very much isn't.

Unlike her, it takes him a moment to notice. He has a passive skill that makes him immune to pain.

"Wha- YOU-"

He shoves her away and brings his other hand around, launching the spell he'd kept at the ready.

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"Mirror of Planes."

 

The green bolt is sucked into the magic circle on Sky's palm. Then it shoots out again, striking Olando in the chest. It blows him off his feet, and by the time he stops skidding over the earth, he is well and thoroughly dead. The countless black tentacles evaporate into nothing, freeing the city in a wave of interrupted tentacle rape.

 

Sky just looks at the dead High Priest sadly. It's funny. If she weren't already consumed by lewd urges all the time, if she weren't already the sort of person the High Priest was saying everyone should be, she never could have acted. She was only able to keep her head because the way Frenzy Nova made her feel wasn't all that different than how she's accustomed to feeling in her daily life.

Sky understands why Coventina is so angry, but Sky herself is just... she can see the beauty in it, in what could have happened, if certain details had been less... evil. A profound waste.

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"Is everyone all right?"

Belatedly, he drops the Genesic Echo. Lightning dissipates.

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"I'm fine but let's not plan on doing that again. I think that hurt worse than literally anything I've ever felt. And that fuckless fuckstick didn't even feel it before he died."

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Eelesia would be embarrassed by the ripped-open crotch of her bodysuit except for how she's standing next to Coventina and also there are a lot of other exposed adventurers around here and also she's still burning in an inferno of horny need even if she's more adapted to that feeling now and is holding on to her self-control.

"I think we've won and none of us are hurt," she says.

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"Oh good. Let's..." He looks around. "...will we be any use in disaster relief efforts? Because if not I think perhaps we should all go back to Eelesia's suite and, hmm, is the lust spell still active, this affects whether the obvious thing to do is have an orgy or take a nap..."

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Eelesia grabs his hand and starts tugging him along as she strides back into the city.

"I don't think it affects that at all. Laurent, let's go have privacy right now because I know that you would strongly prefer that regardless of how urgently we both desire sexual release and I think that this consideration proves we're all still in our right minds about this. I haven't felt sexual urges this strong often but that is a matter of degree and not of kind and the obvious rational response to this mutual desire, regardless of source and proportional to intensity, is to sate it with each other since that is within the boundaries of mutual interaction we both inhabit..." she slows just enough to give him a searching, slightly vulnerable look, "...right?"

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"I, um," he blushes. "That's—a more complicated question than it might seem at first glance—I—sorry. The. When—things were going very poorly—I think I... broke something...? I couldn't stop thinking about—things I'd rather not discuss in public—and it was getting in the way of tactics, it was, was, was an attack vector and then it... wasn't. And it's, um. Whatever went away isn't back yet."

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"Oh. That sounds. I don't know if it's directly associated but I know how much you don't like to be... seen. I don't think it will come back until we're alone. So we should go be alone. Either way."

She pauses, glances back, sees Sky and Coventina following them at a comfortable distance, then gives him an earnest, pleading look.

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"...yes, that sounds... sensible," he says, although he sounds slightly worried when he says it.

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As they rush back to the Highest Lair, they come upon a number of people who fell from a considerable height when the tentacles vanished, variously injured and in pain.

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"Keep going," Coventina says firmly to Laurent and Eelesia. "We'll handle this. Rain of Mercy!"

 

 

It's a bigger, lighter rain. It spreads to cover most of the city, casting everything into the soft light of a cloudy sky. The healing droplets patter gently onto rooftops and windows, a comforting shroud.

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Okay. Onward to alone time with Eelesia.

He's clinging to her hand a little, when they finally make it back to the suite. As the door closes behind them, he starts to slump, and then he's sliding down the wall to sit curled up against it with his arms wrapped around his knees.

"I'm scared that it's never going to come back and I don't want that to happen because I really like you and I miss wanting to kiss you," he says, mostly into said knees. "...and because I'm afraid that if I can't enjoy sex I can't be friends with any of you which is probably stupid because it's been working fine so far but I was trying to figure out how to open up and now it's all just... gone. Sorry. Despair isn't useful and I should do something else. How are you doing—"

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"Less confused about why just glomping you again didn't feel right, even if I also feel like I could spend the next three days doing nothing but sex."

Coventina is definitely better at psychosexual analysis than Eelesia but Eelesia fancies that she might just be better at Laurent than her very lewd friend is.

"This might not be true of everyone but I think for you if you miss it that means it's not really gone," Eelesia suggests.

She kneels in front of him, not quite sitting on his feet as she reaches out to pet his hair.

"I don't think you kissed me back at the start just because of the spell, either. I think that because I think we felt the same way in that moment. If the urge had been the only factor I would've grabbed Sky first, but when the need hit me, my first impulse wasn't to quench it. It was to share it with you."

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"I... liked that you shared it with me," he says, leaning into her hand. "I like it when you kiss me. It's probably not obvious because I always freeze up, at least until today, but I'd have said something if I minded. It's nice. Has been nice. I... can't find the part of myself that wants to kiss people, right now."

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"It seemed like it," she says softly. "I just felt like doing it when it seemed like we were feeling the same thing but you just had a harder time expressing it. Thanks for telling me directly, though. I'm glad to have confirmation I wasn't projecting."

She gently caresses her way down his arms, then takes his hands and pulls, bringing them both up to their feet.

"If you can't find that part of yourself right now it might be better for you if you stop looking for it," she suggests, guiding them toward one of the sofas in the sitting room. "I want us to take our clothes off and I'll sit in your lap and I'll just hold you and you'll just hold me and there will be nothing but that closeness and the smallest possible distance between us. If the urge to kiss me comes back, I'll be right there, and if it doesn't, I'll still be right there. You and the others were amazing and I was basically useless in that battle and it'd be good to talk about it but I want to put us in maximal proximity before we start, okay?"

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"Okay," he says. "Thank you." He smiles, slightly, just the faintest hint, but it's a happy faintest-hint-of-smile and not a neutral/masking one.

He takes off his clothes, although he hesitates at the underwear. His body is still aroused, and he's uncomfortable about it.

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After stripping herself nude, Eelesia sees his hesitation and immediately understands it.

"I'm aroused too." She is, she's visibly wet. "Our bodies are maintaining the state that is correct for their environmental circumstances." Her forehead gently comes to rest against his. "You're already exposed to me in all the ways that matter, and I to you, with or without the presence of a handful of cotton. Here." Moving slowly, she slips her hands down and takes it off for him.

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"It's—physically uncomfortable and it keeps impinging on my attention and I don't like it." He wraps his arms around her and hugs her close, and then sits on the couch. "Turns out that without the ability to enjoy it, being hard is just really inconvenient."

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"I imagine it would be, but I also imagine the pressure of clothing makes that worse, not better?"

Eelesia follows him down onto the seat and straddles his lap. She lets her weight sink against his body slowly, putting his erection behind her so that it nestles in her butt as her weight at the base pushes it down a little in a way that she hopes is the opposite of distracting, while still allowing her to press her body close to his.

Forehead against his again? No, even if he's comfortable with her, he'd probably be more comfortable if she closes her eyes. They can whisper their after-action reports into each other's ears. She worms her arms behind him, between his back and the cushions, and holds him.

"I'm here for you, Laurent," she murmurs. "Let yourself be. Whatever you're feeling, is okay."

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He closes his eyes too, letting his hands rest on her waist and lower back.

When he feels himself start to tear up, his instinctive reaction is no not that anything but that, but—would it really be so bad, to trust her? For once in his life, to just fucking let himself have an emotion in front of another thinking creature?

For a moment he teeters between crying and not-crying without really moving in either direction, and then the sniffles start and it's all downhill from there. He hugs her tighter and buries his face in her shoulder and sobs.

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It's hard not to sympathy cry when this close to someone she cares about who's crying in earnest, and she doesn't even try to hold it in because why would she? Every bit of synchronicity in their emotions is to be cherished.

She strokes him and nuzzles him and the sensation of his tears trickling over her skin is like a caress. She knows how significant this is for him. How much it means, that he was able to cry. His heart, releasing into hers.

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Wow, if he thought having an erection was uncomfortable and attention-demanding, crying is so much worse. He's forgotten what it was like, it's been too long since he last indulged himself. Why are bodies so inconvenient and unpleasant to exist in?

...it's not all bad, though. Being held—being held by Eelesia—it's... it's not something he has a comparison point for, not something he can describe even inside his own head, but it's good. It's a good thing. She's good.

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She loves him.

This isn't a revelation or a surprise, but him opening up to her like this sure makes it salient in a way it hasn't really been before.

Hugging and petting and gentle wordless affirmations and love.

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Eventually he cries himself out and then he's just nuzzling her in a slightly sniffly fashion.

"Well, that was unpleasant," he sighs. "...not you. You were... good. I just don't like... mm. Not being in control of myself."

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"I know."

Gentle neck-kiss.

"I'm grateful, you know. For what it means to you, that you let that control lapse for me."

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"Oh." He blushes, and hugs her closer for a second. "That... yeah. I. I like you and I trust you and I want to be friends with you and—yeah."

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"Yeah," Eelesia agrees, smiling into his hair.

She isn't any less physically aroused but she's basking in the intimacy and not having his cock inside her is details.

"You really were good out there," she comments after a while. "The trick you and Coventina pulled off was very cunning. That jerk was completely out of our league and we all should've been doomed but... it was barely even a fight. I'm just glad I managed to stop distracting Sky in time for her to save us all at the end there."

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"Yes, Sky was amazing. The best idea I had at that point was to dash through him as many times as my mana could sustain in the hopes that it would whittle him down a little, which wouldn't have saved us and also might not even have gotten him the rest of the way to dead."

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Eelesia nods, nuzzling Laurent's ear.

"Do you want to talk through the whole battle? We don't have to, or we could wait for all four of us."

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Snug.

"I think the full tactical analysis is best done with the whole team, but if there's something you want to say before then, feel free."

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She shakes her head.

"Let's leave that aside for now, then. It's over. We won."

She just continues to hold him. It's gotten quiet, the only sound the soft patter of raindrops against the window. Everyone who needed healing is probably healed by now, but Coventina hasn't stopped her spell. She's curious why, but the soft rain also makes for a rather cozy ambiance.

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He closes his eyes again and holds Eelesia and softly smiles.

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He's still hard, even now, she can feel. Doing anything physically encouraging would be unhelpful, she decides. He's turned on, it's just that being turned on doesn't matter to him right now, so making him more turned on wouldn't accomplish anything.

It's... surprisingly easy, to be patient. Eelesia doesn't usually think of herself as a patient person, but she gets it, on a gut level, that he can't engage that part of himself right now. She's in a weird headspace herself, empathizing with that, simultaneously feeling the throbbing in her core where her groin is pressed against his skin, feeling the urge to grind against him... and yet being caught in a shared moment that seems to be generating an endless well of patience, like something outside of herself is holding her still. It feels fragile, but so long as nothing breaks the delicate balance, she feels like she could remain like this forever and be content.

 

"Hey," she idly speaks up after a while, her voice a whisper-soft murmur into his ear. "Coventina and Sky. How do you feel about them? You trusted me enough to let go of your tears with me. If you imagine letting go like that with either of them, what does that feel like?"

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"...scary," he admits. "For... reasons. I don't know. I don't think I could cry on them but I think I could talk about my feelings with them, which is also a thing I generally don't do."

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"Scary in the same way? As each other? As me? Were you scared, to cry? It's okay if you were."

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"Yeah, I was. And no, it's different. Coventina... it's a long story and not all of it is mine to tell, but we started adventuring together under awkward circumstances and I'm still untangling that. Sky, I think, I... don't feel like I understand how to be good to her? When I say that out loud I imagine her telling me that it's not as hard as I'm making it sound, but... being told that doesn't make the uncertainty go away."

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"I wonder. Sky seems to aspire to existing as a masturbation aide. To be trusted in the way one would trust an inanimate object. Early on, I would've guessed that she'd be the easiest of us for you to trust, because of how she conceptualizes her own role like that, so I'm kind of wondering why that didn't work."

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"Well... she's not an inanimate object? It's possible to upset her and I have even empirically verified this by joking about us being her battle harem that one time? And it is also possible to treat her poorly in a sexual context and I managed that one too, before we met you—she wasn't hurt or upset about it but Coventina told me off for letting myself fall asleep on her while she was subject to ongoing mana paralysis from a monster egg, and I agree that it was short-sighted and irresponsible of me. So."

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"Oh."

Pet. Nuzzle.

"I like Sky but I don't know what she'd say if she were here. You're right, though. Unlike an inanimate object, you can ask Sky herself what's good for her. I know it's really easy not to, and I think she makes not-asking easy on purpose because she's insecure about anyone ever prioritizing her. I suspect that she'd even find it cathartic to have clear answers dragged out of her by force. Unless you were going to be judgmental about those answers. Which is the part of it that I think you two have in common, actually, that fear of judgement. So I know you wouldn't be."

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"Forcibly befriending someone, now there's an idea. I think I see what you mean, though." Snuggle.

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Snuggle.

 

"I think, to me, Coventina is someone I feel completely safe turning my back to, so to speak," Eelesia eventually comments.

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"That makes sense. If we hadn't somewhat gotten off on the wrong foot I might feel similarly."

He hesitates, then says with uncharacteristic shyness, "...do you think you could help me drag answers out of Sky? I'm afraid if I try it on my own I might not be firm enough."

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"Yeah! Of course. I should maybe have encouraged that sooner, even."

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Conveniently, that's about when Sky shows up.

The door to their suite opens and shuts, and then Sky comes into view, her face relaxed in contentment. She's entirely naked from the knees up, her hair plastered to her head, the water dripping down her body having not entirely washed away the streaks of white on her chest and face and back.

She sees them on her way into the bathroom and pauses, giving them a small smile. "Hi."

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"Hi. It looks like you had a good time out there," he says, smiling back.

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Shy smiling nod.

"Coventina went around to organize a sort of... therapy orgy? Or, probably, several different therapy orgies, by now. That Ranger girl is helping her. I think maybe they know each other?" She peers at him and Eelesia with a bit of uncertainty, opens her mouth again, then holds back the question she wants to ask. "I'm gonna," she points at the bathroom, then proceeds to bathroom.

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He nods agreeably when she goes, and quietly snuggles Eelesia.

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Sky emerges a short while later, clean and dry. She's nude, of course, since Eelesia and Laurent are.

At Eelesia's prompting, she comes over and sits next to Laurent, leaning on him comfortably.

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He unwraps an arm from Eelesia and settles it across Sky's shoulders, pulling her a little closer.

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Snuggle!

Always happy to be included, she doesn't express her concerned curiosity about what Laurent and Eelesia haven't gotten up to, but her face isn't subtle.

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...he sighs. "I've got some explaining to do, haven't I."

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"Um?"

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"...I think I broke my sexuality during the crisis and I'm not sure what I did to it or how to fix it."

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Sky is half disbelieving, half speechlessly horrified.

She has no mental model or context for what that statement means, beyond that he and Eelesia are probably the only two people in the city not having sex in the last few hours, despite both being visibly aroused and needy. She shivers as she tries to come up with some kind of response, but she can't even come up with a coherent question.

After a moment, she gives up, and decides that she doesn't need to understand. Laurent wasn't in the habit of fucking any of them anyway. She'll just mentally file this under miscellaneous existential dread and keep cuddling.

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"...I could explain further but I don't know that you'd benefit from hearing it. I'm sure I'll end up explaining it to Coventina whenever she gets in, anyway."

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"That's okay."

She runs her hand over Eelesia's skin in a slow caress, enjoying the feel of her.

"...doesn't it hurt, though?" she asks him in a small voice.

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"Doesn't which?"

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"I mean... don't you need to... isn't... not-cumming, even worse for boys than it is for girls?"

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"Oh. Um... it doesn't... normally when I have this problem and am not in the mood to indulge it I just ignore it until it goes away. It is admittedly not responding as well to that approach as usual. But I don't... have any better ideas."

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No better ideas? Sky thinks this is dumb, but doesn't say so.

"Okay. Um. Okay."

She pulls into herself a little, nuzzling her face into where Eelesia's and Laurent's chests are pressed together.

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"Just out of intellectual curiosity and on a purely physical level would you expect your erection to be more comfortable or less comfortable for you if it was inside me or attended to in some other way?"

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"...physically I think the current state of affairs is a pretty good one. I don't know that there are any benefits to be gained from here in physical comfort without making greater sacrifices in psychological comfort to get them."

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Eelesia nods and gives him a reassuring smile.

"Hey, you wanted to talk to Sky, right?" She kisses Sky's hair. "Here we've got her."

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"True!" He applies a gentle squeeze with the arm around Sky's shoulders. "Sky, I want to be your friend. I want to be a good friend to you. As such I have enlisted Eelesia to help me interrogate you about how being good to you works."

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Blushing smile. "Eeep?"

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"I said something earlier... when we were talking about Laurent's trust issues. I said you would want to be trusted the same way an inanimate object is trusted, and he said that you weren't an inanimate object, and I said that means that we could ask you questions that couldn't be asked of an inanimate object, so we're gonna ask!"

       "...okay?"

"Was I right?"

       "...maybe? It... does sound kind of nice."

"What does. Be specific, cutie."

       "I... do want to be trusted like that. If... if Laurent is worried about something I might do, I want him to... do to me what he needs to, to feel comfortable? E-Especially if, that's like, tying me up so I can't look at him when he fucks me."

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"It's not so much about being seen as about... being perceived at all. And it's pretty difficult to get someone into a state where they can't perceive the person who's fucking them. Although monster eggs do seem to help." He gives Sky another squeeze. "I... liked trying that, even though it didn't quite go as planned. Maybe someday I'll be able to try it again."

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Sky makes a cute affirmative noise.

"Is... that all you wanted to know?"

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"...hmm. I think... what I want is to understand you well enough that I feel confident I know how to interact with you in ways that have the effects I intend and not ones I don't. But it's hard to achieve that by asking specific questions."

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"Well... what effects do you intend?"

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"I want to be your friend and be good to you and make you happy and not upset you. And if I manage to fix my sexuality I expect I'll think of some more things to want."

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"I think, you're already a good friend to me? You, I mean, you don't use me for sex yourself but you don't... um... get in the way of it? Like not even in a passive way where I feel guilty and selfish for being hornier than you? So um, the part where you don't feel comfortable using me to get off is, um, the only part that, y'know. The way you are with us, as, as a... roommate and party member? Is nice."

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"...well, good! I'd hate to get in the way of you doing things you enjoy. I like when my friends have a good time." Squeeze. "...hmm, now that I'm thinking about it, it occurs to me that... while I'm trying to fix my sexuality I might end up wanting to do things that... escalate toward sex but only very very slowly? And I don't know whether that's the sort of thing you would enjoy, or not enjoy, or enjoy but only complicatedly, or something else I haven't thought of."

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Blush.

"Um... you can... I mean, being useful to you in that... as a thing-that-is-for-sex, that's..."

       "Even if the details are unfun in the moment you would find it fulfilling?" Eelesia suggests.

"Um, yeah. Not that... um, it might be pleasant all around, I don't know, I just... it sounds like exactly the kind of thing I, um, want to be for?"

       "You want to be a good friend to us, too?" Eelesia tries.

Shy nod. "Not just that. It's... hot. As a thought. Using our friendship like... emotional bondage, to hold me down while you... because, I do, you are. My friends. So."

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"...I'm not entirely sure I understood that, but what I understood, I liked," he says.

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When Sky doesn't ask for herself, Eelesia does it for her. "Which parts are unsure-feeling?"

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"I don't think I know what you mean by emotional bondage? And the—pieces of the sentence around that—I'm unsure of those because I'm unsure of it?"

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"Um... I just meant... you don't have to hesitate out of... concern... that, um, I won't like sex things that you're doing to me, because..."

      "Because you would do anything for your friends?" Eelesia suggest in a light, half-serious tone.

She thinks for a moment. "Someone I didn't like would have to tie me up, or at least hold me down somehow, and the part where they're forcing me, making me helpless to stop them, that's... I crave that. It feels really good... even when it doesn't. If you're using me for a sexual purpose I'll definitely feel good about that; I'll enjoy it even if I don't enjoy it."

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"Hmm. I think that makes sense." Thoughtful snug.

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Little smile. Cuddle.

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The conversation lapses into a comfortable silence, and he snuggles them cozily until it's time for bed.

The next morning at breakfast, he confesses that he doesn't feel up for inseminating alraunes, and suggests they try out that fetch quest with the silk if they can't find anything better on the board. Before he checks the board, though, he scrolls through his skill list and notices something odd.

"Those spells the high priest used, they cost three skill points each? I don't think I've seen that before." Indeed, a quick scan doesn't turn up any others that cost more than one apiece, although he doesn't peruse the list closely enough to be confident he's not missing one somewhere.

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"Oh right! Skills come in three tiers but because you're classless you don't have to wait until high level to unlock those. For normal classes reaching level five unlocks your class's 'starter' tier two skills and reaching level fifteen unlocks your 'starter' tier three skills. Tier twos take two skill points per purchase like it takes six total to get the sacred greater version and tier threes take three skill points per, nine total to get sacred greater."

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"Interesting! So it could potentially benefit me a lot to start hanging around much higher-level adventurers and spying on their skills..."

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"Might be worth it, if there's an opportunity," Coventina agrees. "That's still a lot of skill points you don't have yet, though."

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"It's always possible I'll find something worth saving up for!"

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"Yep."

Since there doesn't appear to be a better - wait.

Coventina points at a new quest. "They need someone to purify Lake Lowguy. 100,000 Lake. To purify a lake. Pun intended. But wow that's basically free money. You guys wanna picnic while I go for a swim?"

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"Oh, that sounds like a lovely idea!"

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Laurent's party can register that quest, then.

When they do, Luna has a warning for them, though: "It wasn't in the official write-up but I've heard some rumors that Lake Lowguy is home to an entire school of Mesmers. So don't let your guard down, alright?"

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"And what are Mesmers? The name doesn't sound promising..."

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"An ambush-type aquatic monster that possess some form of hypnotic power," Luna explains. "I'm sorry I'm not well-informed on the particulars in this case. I believe we have an Orb of Clarity I could rent out to you to protect you from the hypnosis, though! Would you like me to find it?"

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"That sounds like a very useful precaution, thank you!"

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Coventina collects the Orb. It's about the size of a ping-pong ball and hangs from a chain around her neck.

"Yeah. Thank you. Shall we?"

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"Let's see what this lake is like!"

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Walking east for a few hours brings them to: a lake.

It is a very ordinary seeming lake, ignoring how the water is murky and an unfortunate hue of gray.

There is one random shade tree on a small outcropping, and fields of short scrub grass surrounding. The shore of the lake is packed mud and water-smoothed rock. The presence of Mesmers is not immediately apparent.

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"Well, if the rest of us stay back from the water, hopefully the hypnotic fish won't be able to reach us. And we should keep an eye on Coventina and potentially have Sky divert the Mesmers' attention if necessary. ...and if it looks like the hypnotic fish are luring anyone underwater, we all leave."

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"I think that covers the obvious failure modes. Good plan."

She takes off the Orb of Clarity, casts Etheric Wardrobe, and puts it back on once she's nude.

Coventina walks down the bank and steps into the water until it is up to her knees.

"Purify."

The gray murk is displaced by a pulsing vwoom of pure, sparkling clear water in a circle around her, her magic traveling outward in a ripple. Another ripple follows, then another, pushing the circle of clean water further outward.

This is probably going to take a while.

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"Being at a lake puts me in mind of fishing which puts me in mind of dinner," he says thoughtfully. "Maybe I'll make something with fish tonight. Although I don't want to risk trying to catch anything here in case of hypnotic interference."

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"I'm sure it will be yummy," Sky says in agreement.

After their talk last night, she feels bold enough to take Laurent's hand and put it on top of her head, before letting go and going back to watching Coventina.

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He makes a small sound of pleased surprise, moves a little closer to her, and starts happily petting her.

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Headpats and petting are definitely things he should do to her at every opportunity as often as he likes.

Purr? Tail-wag-without-a-tail? Nonspecific moe noises? She doesn't know how to do any of that on command so she settles for giving Laurent a tiny blissful smile. (The sentiment comes across clearly. 21 Allure is 21 Allure.)

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It's very cute. She should definitely remind Laurent to pet Sky any time he could be petting Sky without that getting in the way of anything. She herself just leans into him a little, brushing shoulders, as she watches Coventina.

"Hmm. Rate of expansion, osmosis of contaminants back into the clean area, time between castings..." She shakes her head. "Can't calculate the time frame without knowing how deep the lake is. Probably a few hours but not all day?"

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"Hmm! Yes, that looks plausible." He has two hands; he can hold hands with Eelesia on one side and give Sky gentle headpets on the other. This seems like a correct use of resources. Also cozy. "So what else do you know about higher-tier skills? Any examples offhand? Are they generally worth the increased point cost?"

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Handholding! How lewd. Very cozy.

"Usually! Spells in the higher tiers often have effects or means-of-effect that are fundamentally less limited in some important way that results in more grandeur which I know isn't very specific but one reasonable heuristic is in the cost and difficulty of performing the skill. Higher mana cost, harder or more complex to wield effectively, or anything along that theme. It makes sense, if skill points can be conceptualized as a fungible form of time-spent-practicing then skills that would require far more learning to, um, learn, require more skill points, right?"

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"Oh, interesting! I think I see what you mean. How high do skill tiers go, then, I wonder?"

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"If there's a fourth tier no one knows about it. I read about this once: the highest level ever achieved in recorded history was forty-nine, so maybe a fourth tier unlocks at level fifty and is just waiting for someone to discover it, but there aren't monsters that strong more than once in a thousand years so even if you have a way to keep yourself young indefinitely probably there's nothing waiting at that threshold. The man who got to level forty-nine, it took him two thousand years and he hasn't been seen since he banished the Winter Fairy Queen a century ago."

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"Well, I think I just discovered a new life ambition."

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Headtilt.

"Getting to level fifty?"

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"Indeed! And beyond, eventually."

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"Well, I guess it's good to have a long-term plan," she laughs. "I hope you plan to live life a bit more than highest-level-record guy along the way, though."

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"Oh? Was he notoriously singleminded? I suppose that tracks, it'd be difficult to get there any other way." He squeezes Eelesia's hand and pets Sky's hair. "I like having friends and I don't plan to stop. It would be something of a tragedy if I reached level fifty and I wasn't still making dinner for my party every night and then snuggling you all to sleep."

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D'awww.

Cheek kiss.

"I did plan out an eternal youth synergy early," Eelesia says. "I should have it by level twelve if all goes to plan. I could have it sooner but I decided it was safer to prioritize combat power in my early levels."

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"Extremely valid. What's your eternal youth plan?"

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Eelesia explains the two tier two skills and one tier one skill that, when combined, should keep her young and healthy indefinitely! The key to the scheme is actually a cosmetic passive skill that prevents scars. The sacred greater version of that combined with this other passive skill that lets her metabolize mana in place of food (it requires higher Ardor than she currently has but she has planned for that) and a third passive that the author assures you somehow connects the first two into a cure for aging. The formation stabilizes and becomes self-perpetuating at a Sanity of 28 or above, for a total of nine skill points spent.

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"28 Sanity! A worthy aspiration in itself. Is that relying at all on class-based stat bonuses, or could I theoretically do the same? On the other hand I wonder if we could come up with a more skill-point-efficient version that relies on combining skills across classes..."

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"That's actually a good question I don't know if my Ardor bonus would be boosting that effect or if it would be necessary if it did. Eternal youth synergies are a much-studied topic and I think mine is a good one but I admittedly didn't read very thoroughly into the other classes. There probably are some superior formations that only a classless adventurer can use though, if only because of the sheer amount of possible combinations! I wonder if anyone classless has tested any of the class-specific formations though now I'm curious."

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"We can try looking into it! And something for Sky, too," petpet, "if eternal youth is something you're interested in."

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Sky nuzzles into his petting.

"It would be nice to have. I haven't, um, looked up how Shamans do it, yet. I wasn't sure I'd ever get to a high enough level for it to matter. But, that was before, and this party is um, really effective. So. Yeah."

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"I would very much like to have you with me on my journey to higher levels than anyone has yet been recorded to reach!"

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Blu~u~u~uwu~u~u~ush.

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"Eelesia!Laurent! Wake up!! WAKE THE FUCK UP!!!"

"SEAFOAM BARRAGE!"

A towering, foamy breaker suddenly surges up and soaks Laurent, Eelesia, and Sky from head to toe.

A half-dozen dinner-plate sized creatures are washed out of the air and flounder dizzily as they float on the water. Four prismatic fins like the wings of a butterfly flap limply, flickering with patterns of light, surrounding a small central body that seems to be just a knot of tiny tentacles.

Coventina's body is covered in several of these things, latched onto her like starfish to a rock. A half dozen on her arms and legs, one on each breast and one cupping her crotch.

Laurent, Sky, and Eelesia are standing waist-deep in the water. They're naked. Their equipment is all piled up on the shore, behind Coventina.

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He heads out of the water as fast as humanly possible, resisting the urge to claw at all his exposed skin where he cannot currently detect any psychic fish but no longer feels like he can trust that impression.

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While Laurent is splashing toward shore in a panic, Coventina is wrestling with her own psychic fish problem. Literally.

She got her spell off well before any of the psychic fish touched Laurent or the other girls. They're not actually doing a very good job of restraining her, and it's only the sheer number of them that makes them a threat. But casting Purify on water means casting it as a water-element spell which means her mana is still at full capacity.

"Sky! Mirror!" And she sends a Seafoam Barrage at Sky.

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She startles, stumbling as she turns away from Laurent.

Then it takes her a second to realize what Coventina intends. "M-Mirror of Planes!" she yelps.

The foaming wave folds into her spell glyph, then fires back out, crashing over Coventina and leaving the goddess' body bare of mesmers.

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Eelesia, meanwhile, sees ripples of peaceful color in the water and shakes herself, hard. Her mind chews through the deception now that she knows to be on guard against it, and suddenly she realizes that hundreds of mesmers are swimming toward her, and toward Sky, and that Coventina is already surrounded.

She doesn't have her wands, but she hardly needs to aim, here...

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Laurent is only barely beginning to awaken to the fact that he is normally much more useful in a fight than this. He definitely doesn't have enough of his brain online to strategize. Part of him wants to stop and reevaluate and try to think about what his teammates are doing and what implications their behaviour has but that part is being shouted down by all the parts that are insisting he get out of the water nownownow and not stop to think no, not even about how to get out of the water more efficiently.

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Eelesia isn't panicking exactly but she's very much acting on impulse herself when she screams, "Forked Lightning!"

And then her world is pain, because she doesn't have any defense against lightning.

(But all of the mesmers are very very dead.)

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He notices that, because even to his panic-addled mind, the lake which you are standing in suddenly being electrified is a pretty attention-getting event.

It doesn't stop him splashing toward the shore, until a couple of steps later when he connects the dots and realizes that Eelesia doesn't have Stormheart and she was standing inside the same body of water she just zapped, and that actually gets him to turn around.

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Sky is busy pulling Coventina out of the water.

Coventina held up to the electrocution better than Eelesia (in that she is still conscious) and is able to make this slightly easier than it might otherwise have been. Sky gets Coventina to shore, glances back at where Laurent is pulling Eelesia out likewise, and gasps suddenly as she realizes there's something else she can do to help.

She applies herself to Coventina's breast, fills her mouth with milk, and then runs over to kiss Eelesia.

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Laurent, still slowly catching up on the last five minutes of his life, barely notices this development until it's already happening but then notes in a distant corner of his mind that his teammates are very good at things. Which is good because right now he is incredibly useless.

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Eelesia twitches when the milk spills into her mouth, and just the contact is enough to let her swallow, and then cough as some of it goes down the wrong way. Gak. After a moment, her body relaxes and then alertness returns to her. She looks up at Sky and Laurent, realizes what happened, and winces. "Oops."

Headpats for- Pats to whatever bit of her she can reach, for Sky.

"...Laurent?"

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After a couple more steps he manages, "—sorry—"

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Eelesia shakes her head, musters herself, and stands up.

"No. I'm sorry. I reacted on reflex and it was the wrong reflex. Definitely you don't need to sorry for anything. You didn't electrocute me, you could've just zapped to shore but you didn't and I think you were acting on reflex too?" She's going to avoid the word 'panic' for the next few minutes, she thinks.

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Sky, meanwhile, goes back to help Coventina.

This consists of Coventina using Flesh for Flesh to make everything terrible and then kissing her until everything stops being terrible.

Wow is she glad she got Stormheart. Electrocution sucks and even if pain is A Way Of Making Her Helpless she does not like feeling like she has a muscle cramp in her everything and also being on fire.

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Laurent has... some sort of reason to that, probably. He'll think of it in a minute. He's still reviewing footage in his head, connecting up memories with each other, realizing he remembers getting into the water even though he didn't notice anything strange at the time, triple-checking all his actions and motivations from multiple angles. Trying very hard not to claw his own skin off, an especially counterproductive urge since the memories suggest that if he had psychic fish on him he'd be able to tell.

"No," he says to Eelesia, "sorry for—for being just generally useless—"

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Eelesia tests the waters (bad metaphor right now, but) for hugging him, estimating even odds on him being in a state where the contact would help at all. She wants to comfort him but she'll let him process if he needs that.

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It once again takes him a couple of steps to process that a new event has occurred, and this time it also takes him a couple of steps after that to propagate the idea that he should react to this event, and by that point he's noticed that he's out of the water although still standing uncomfortably close to its edge, so he stops and stands there for another short moment catching up to the question of whether she is still hugging him now that he's gone a full five seconds without seeming to notice.

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Well, if it's not hurting anything, she'll hug him until it starts helping or some other action seems sensible.

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Teammate hug. Eelesia hug. Good hug? Yes? Probably?

He hugs back. His face is very blank and his movements are somewhat mechanical but he's definitely hugging her.

"I would like... to be home," he says slowly. "With you, in your bed. With... all of you. In our bed. And very few things happening. As few things as possible. Is this a feasible goal?"

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"Of course, Laurent."

She glances at Coventina, who has re-summoned her regalia.

       "Card shows the quest complete. Guess I got it all before the Mesmers showed up."

"Oh good."

Eelesia does not want to unhug.

"Can you and Sky dress us?"

       "Sure."

Eelesia's usual purple mage outfit is at the tailor's for repairs, so today she's wearing a dark grey sundress and a thin purple jacket, which is fortunately a lot easier to put on while hugging Laurent than a tightly fitted body stocking.

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Okay, that can happen, probably.

He keeps running multiple sanity checks on all his sensory input and motor planning, and everything keeps coming up fine, because all the mesmers are dead, but he keeps running them anyway. It makes him a bit slow to respond to events, but it's possible to get clothing on him and steer him toward home.

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The trip back to Axel is not interrupted, and the girls all help him get there without incident.

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He sits on the edge of the bed and slowly tips over sideways until he is flopped somewhat uncomfortably on top of the blankets with his legs still trailing off onto the floor. This is a suboptimal way to lie down and he should really be doing something else. Time to triple-check that impulse. Wow, this is a wildly unsustainable way for his brain to work.

"...sorry," he says. "For... having such a thoroughly useless reaction to the Mesmers."

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"It's fine."

Coventina, with the other girls' help, gently strips him naked again.

"I think I might've fucked up a little, myself. When the Mesmers first latched on to me, I should've dropped into the water immediately. Instead, you all heard me and looked. And the Mesmers on my body were able to hypnotize you."

She folds and stacks Laurent's clothes and puts them aside, then casts Etheric Wardrobe again.

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Eelesia also strips and helps scooch Laurent to the middle of the bed, cuddling up to him once he's there.

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And Sky follows suit, stripping off her shawl and skirt and shoes and crawling naked onto Laurent between the other two girls. She's the lightest and smallest, and can fit on his chest, resting her head between his and Coventina's.

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His reaction lags for a couple of seconds while he thinks through all this from multiple angles, and then he tentatively rests a hand on Sky's head to pet her.

"...if I can't trust my own thoughts and senses I can't trust anything, ever," he says. "It's exhausting but I don't know what to do. Besides immediately go out and pursue the most ruthlessly optimized leveling scheme I can come up with and pour all the resulting stat points into Sanity. Or buy an Orb of Clarity. How expensive are they?"

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"We're paying 10,000 Lake a day to rent this one," Coventina says.

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"Once I knew the Mesmers were there I was able to throw off their second attempt to hypnotize me just by staying focused. Your Sanity is only a couple points below mine I bet you could do the same already."

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"Yes, I think I am almost certainly wildly overreacting, it's just—those were my thoughts. I should've come up with better precautions in the first place, and paid more attention to whether I was reacting appropriately to the dangers at hand, and I should probably not currently be double-checking all my trains of thought for outside influence and all my sensory input for consistency, but... it's very hard to stop."

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"I don't think it was, though. Our thoughts, I mean. We were still talking to each other, right? When we finally noticed it was like, it was sort of like noticing that you're bouncing your leg? Or actually more like that you'd walked out the door without your shoes on? It felt a lot like a bout of ordinary forgetfulness. And if that's correct then experiencing it once is immunizing."

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"Is it? How so?"

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"Well, do you think you'll ever be able to look at a lake again without consciously or unconsciously scanning for suspiciously unsuspicious colored lights? Or if not ever again, any time in the next few years."

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"...I suppose I see what you mean, but the trouble I'm having is convincing myself to stop scanning for suspiciously unsuspicious things, so..."

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...okay yeah, Coventina gets up long enough to grab the Orb. She loops the chain over Laurent's head and settles back down for more cuddling.

"We'll have to return it later, but right now, I can tell you that I was completely immune while I was wearing that, so it's proven effective."

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"...thank you."

He goes still for a moment, trying to figure out what effect the Orb is having on the flow of his thoughts. Probably this is not the right response but he feels like he needs to check. Is he hoping there will be something noticeable so he'll know it's doing something, or hoping there won't be so he won't feel counterproductively compelled to work against the outside influence? He isn't sure.

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The Orb of Clarity's protection doesn't feel like anything to the wearer.

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He nevertheless spends a solid five minutes introspecting about it before he resumes petting Sky... but, when he does, he's a little more relaxed than he was before.

"...I think I want one of these," he says. "In case of unexpected encounters. How feasible would it be to acquire one? —or—are there any passive skills with a similar effect, that I could observe someone using?"

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"I'm sure there is a passive skill that does the same thing we can research that tomorrow but I think keeping the Orb is out of our budget?"

       "Luna didn't say, but I'll ask her later. Based on the rental cost it is probably out of our budget, yeah."

"Okay. Well, we can definitely look up mental protection passives tomorrow." She gives Laurent an affectionate nuzzle. "It would be good for us to take a few days off and spend some leisure time in town anyway."

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"How far out of our budget, I wonder—it seems likely that we could optimize harder if we tried—" He sighs. "No, it's simpler to look into mental protection passives and try to get me a good look at one and then level. If we can find a suitable quest."

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"I'd suggest banishing an alraune if you weren't, y'know. We might get in trouble if we're caught at it but I bet other adventurers have been getting away with it already, and it'd probably get you to level five in one shot and it's probably the only monster we can leave you alone-enough with for banishing to work without too much danger."

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"I wouldn't have fun banishing an alraune at the moment, but if it would get me a good mental protection passive..."

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"There's no rush," Eelesia says softly. "We can keep the Orb for a few days. We could keep it all week, and still turn a profit on that quest. You have time to heal, Laurent."

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"I don't want to take time to heal, I want to improve myself as efficiently as possible so I stop having problems." He pauses, reviewing the words that just came out of his mouth. "...okay. Probably no banishing alraunes until I'm capable of enjoying sex again. Probably that is the wise course of action here."

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Eelesia gives him a very warm smile. That reaction was... very him.

"Probably," she agrees. "Any change thatwise since yesterday?"

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He sighs. "No, unless you count the fact that being on high alert against my own thoughts is probably going to make untangling that mess even more difficult, just on the general principle that feeling safe is harder under stress."

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Eelesia pouts as she nuzzles him with concerned affection.

"Then I was wrong that not trying might help you let it come back on its own I guess so that means you do have to try."

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"—what? I'm not sure I follow."

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"I told you to stop trying to find your desire. I thought that would help. It didn't. I'm sorry."

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"...I... still think it was good advice? I wouldn't have been astonished to have gone a couple of days without thinking about my sexuality much even before I broke it?"

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"Oh. Okay. That's a good point. Okay."

Gentle squeeze.

"What do you think we should try? Or you should try?"

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He hesitates for a moment and then resettles himself so he can pet Sky with one hand and snuggle Eelesia with the other.

"I... suppose that a reasonable course of action would be to take it very easy for a few days and not do dangerous or stressful things and in particular stay far away from any potentially mind-affecting hazards, and then..."

He sighs.

In a much quieter, slightly petulant tone of voice, he mumbles, "I don't want to have to put so much effort into making myself feel safe. Can't I just ignore all my feelings and do the maximally efficient thing to accomplish my pragmatic goals with no regard for my personal happiness?"

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"Not when your lack of personal happiness is an evident impediment to the efficiency of accomplishing your pragmatic goals," Eelesia teases without missing a beat.

"Also, we care about your feelings, and I'm going to insist it is rational to so care."

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He sighs again, but this time he's smiling slightly. "Thank you."

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"Of course, Laurent."

Nude cuddling and snuggling continues.