>>6187024 (OP)
>Use a [Cantrip] to flip her skirt.
Bold of her to call us orc bait when she wears their kin around her nethers.

>>6187024 (OP)
>>Leave before you do something stupid.

>>6187024 (OP)
>>Leave before you do something stupid.
Yeah, she has witnesses on her side right now. Best to first learn how to make a remote viewing spell that gets in on record with a person on our side.

>>6187024 (OP)
>Leave before you do something stupid.
Let's not provoke her any more

>>6187024 (OP)
>Use a [Cantrip] to flip her skirt.

Don't cut her blouse open, it only expose her superior assets for all to view.

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>>6187039
>>6187109
>>6187113
You know better than to take some petty revenge against this bitch. Peaking at her panties can't be helped when she's stepping on your head; she complains about that, she has to admit what she did. Calling up your meager mana for some stupid prank would get you in trouble. Not expelled, but dragged infront of the Collegia's elder's to be scolded like a child.

She's not worth the bother.

You calm yourself and dust off your dress. It has plenty of volume, disguising your meager bosom when most sorceresses where things that flaunt and cling. A [Mending] restores your broken glasses. Your hat - the mark of a sorceress, beyond a generous bosom - got lifted to the top of a tree. Mercifully your [Mage Hand] can reach it, even if you need to cling to your focus to make the spell as efficient as it can be. It floats down in the breeze and settles upon the crown of your head.

Blue, white, gold, and black are the colors of your dress, the colors of your sorcery. Blue for the art of condensation. White for the art of purification. Gold for the art of refraction. Black for the art of modulation. [Mending] purifies the glasses, restoring them to a shadow of the platonic form. [Mage Hand] modulates vectors of force upon your hat, controlling its descent.

These are cantrips, the simplest of spells. Casting them in succession leaves you drained.

If only yours were bigger.

Maybe you really are a useless flatty.

Those thoughts gnaw at you as you leave the bitch and her chittering hangers-on behind. One of them found something else to entertain the Queen B, giving you the opportunity to slip away without any further harassment. Why they act like a gaggle of girls half their age is beyond you.

Where do you go?
>Off to study condensation, the art of shifting matter between useful states.
>Off to study refraction, the art of splitting and weaving waveforms.
>Off to study purification, the art of restoring things to their ideal form.
>Off to study modulation, the art of changing values of given parameters.
>Off to visit one of your friends and bug them for snacks and affection.
>Off to visit that sweet young man whose smile brightens your day.
>Off to the library to find something to read.
>Off to the guild to check the quest board for copper quests.

>>6187236
>Off to the guild to check the quest board for copper quests

>>6187236
>Off to visit one of your friends and bug them for snacks and affection.

>>6187236
>Off to study modulation, the art of changing values of given parameters.

If we're really against being a flatty, we need to find out if breast size is a parameter value we can change.

>>6187236
>>Off to visit that sweet young man whose smile brightens your day

>>6187236
>Off to visit that sweet young man whose smile brightens your day.

>>6187236
Even though I'm appreciator of mega milkers myself, there is something to be said for hugging flatties as well. And besides as one sagely manga man said, the most beautiful breasts belong to the one you love.

Anyways,

>Off to visit that sweet young man whose smile brightens your day.
Let's start with this, and then perhaps we can look into metamagic, and ways in which we can perhaps bypass limitations of our form, or perhaps even take advantage of it. After all, the men are being told that size doesn't matter as much as skill does.

File: Our Heroine 2.jpg (2.03 MB, 1719x2100)

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>>6187341
>>6187352
>>6187374
The tower of the Collegia Arcana looms behind you as you leave the campus grounds. Your eyes avoid contact with your fellow students. Most of them are not like that bitch. They don't sneer at your flat chest while walking around with bouncing swells of magic bigger than their heads. The worst you get are looks of pity from women who don't understand that such looks sting harshly in their own way. Even those with mere apples compared to these melon-filled halls have ample room to pity you.

Your mosquito bites, hidden beneath your voluminous dress, hardly deserve to walk these halls. Even an untrained hedgewitch has more magic than you.

Which is why it's a relief to get out of there and into town. No one gives a flat chested sorceress here a second glance, even women endowed with soft and springy assets that they make no use of beyond cantrips useful for everyday life. Cantrips they cast so inefficiently, wasting more leben in the casting than flows through your bosom five times over. Efficiency is your pride, and the one area where you thoroughly exceed your peers. Though you've only enough to cast cantrips, you can get the same effect with thimble full that your peers would need a cup.

Too bad you can only call upon so many thimbles before your bosom is left sore and your body exhausted. Two cantrips leaves you heavy with fatigue, needing to lean upon your staff to hobble your way through the town's main street. A third would have left you unconscious and vulnerable, likely to be strung up naked from the flag pole by that bitch and her posse. Your clothes all neat and folded, and your ID left on top.

The thought of that happening again leaves your ears a shade of red. You kind of like it when people see- NO! You force those thoughts out of your mind before a lecher's grin stains your face, and try to think of anything else.

The town passes by as it always does on your daily trips out from the tower. Stone buildings rise from the street side, packed against one another like masoned books with window faces. The grandest of them sit on the corners, rising higher than their neighbors and sculpted by architects into works of art. The scent of bread and pies wafts through the air and tickles your nose, but you already ate this morning and have no desire for more.

Your destination is where you expect to find a certain young man, whose smile always brightens your day.

Where can you find him?
>At the Collegia Espada, practicing sword arts
>At the smithy, working on his craft
>At the glass blowers, creating works of art
>At the local library, sorting through the books
>At the marketplace, selling various goods
>At the Local Lord's house, serving his liege.
>At the ladies' club, serving exotic drinks

>>6187500
>At the Collegia Espada, practicing sword arts

>>6187500
>At the local library, sorting through the books

>The thought of that happening again
>again
Oh my.

>>6187500
>>At the local library, sorting through the books

>>6187500
>>At the Collegia Espada, practicing sword arts

File: Spoiler Image (283 KB, 1280x2240)

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Name: Valeria Ivanova
Age: 26 years
Height: 185 cm
Swell Magnitude: Null
Leben Flow: 1 mL/Hour
Leben Reserve: 3 mL
School Specializations: Condensation, Purification, Refraction, Modulation

Spells Known

Condensation
The art of shifting matter between useful states.

Ice Shot: Draw ice from the air and use the energy shifted to shoot it forward at your foe.
Evaporate: Cool an object touched or lower the surrounding temperature to evaporate a liquid.

Purification
The art of restoring things to their ideal form.

Mending: Repair an object touched.
Enhancement: Object touched becomes "better" at doing what it is meant to do.

Refraction
The art of splitting and weaving waveforms.

Dancing Lights: Gather and light and form patterns of light within 30 ft.
Levitation: Refract the waves of gravity affecting your person to neutralize its effects.

Modulation
The art of changing values of given parameters.

Mage Hand: Modulate vectors of force upon an object within 30ft to cause it to move.
Levitation: Modulates the effect of gravity up an object or creature touched, neutralizing it.

>>6187583
What a cute mage. No wonder her peers feel threatened.

>>6187500
>>At the Collegia Espada, practicing sword arts

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>>6187504
>>6187565
>>6187688
Clang.

A beautiful sound fills the air as you approach the gates of the Collegia Espada. The ringing of steel upon steel ought to be an ugly thing, yet the men who spar in the courtyard every day make it sound like the pretty chiming of a silver bell. It should have the ugly tones of the Street of Smithies where hammers endlessly pound pig iron into plates of good steel, yet it does not. No, the quality of the men who with grace and elegance waste no motion as they strike at one another is what makes it beautiful. A song to go with their dance.

Your gloomy demeanor brightens immediately when you catch sight of who is dancing in the sparring ring.

The pair look like a set of matched blades. Both have striking red hair and piercing red eyes. For the spar, they wear suits of black ironsilk trimmed with gold along the seams that accentuates their manly figures. Their backs share the same sigil, a dove resting in the center of a ring of brambles, an arrow in its beak and its wings raised to flutter off. What separates them and will ultimately determine the outcome of the spar is age and the wisdom it earns.

"Oh look, Mikhail!" the older man calls with a tease in his voice. The greys in his hair whisper of the extra years he's experienced. His gaze catches you for a moment. "Your biggest fan came to watch. Better not slip up trying to impress her!"

He punctuates his words with the sword art [Nine Steps Toward Heaven]. An advanced sword technique of the Ruby Lemniscate school of bladework, which functions similarly to the higher mysteries of refraction. By using his sword as a prism to refract the waves of fate, this sword art inverts cause and effect by inflicting the fate of "has been struck" upon the target. With that certainty rippling through time, reality corrects itself to adjust for the fact that the target has been struck.

It's a humble technique, one that does not pride itself on flashiness. Simple, elegant, and near impossible to counter without advanced magics or esoteric sword arts. A smile crosses your face when you see the shift in Mikhail's stance.

"You think I would, brother?" he asks. His stance is another technique of the Ruby Lemniscate, for their family pioneered that school of bladework. [Fate Sundering Stance] works like modulation rather than refraction, an effect that allows the user to slip the bonds of fate. He parries his brother's sword. "I won't-"

"Predictable," the older man declares. He moves so quickly that even your keen eye can't follow him.

Suddenly Mikhail is on his back, the stones of the arena crack beneath the weight of the blow he just took. His brother simply sheathes his weapon and says. "You went for the perfect counter instead of settling for good enough. Left yourself open to another vector of attack, to completely negate the first. And you said you weren't trying to impress anyone? Foolish little brother..."

>>6187736
It sounds like Mikhail's brother wants to say something more, but the chime of a sending stone distracts him. He looks at the message upon its crystal surface, and lets outa sigh of long suffering, before setting it back upon his belt. "Lord Caplan has called me to his side for a mission. Don't let your fans get you too distracted from your studies, little brother."

"What are you talking about, Sieg?" Mikhail asks, but his older brother vanished before he found the words.

It's alright that he doesn't know. Siegfried looked at you when he said that, and then the gaggle of well endowed floozies slowly surrounding your man with their soft and bouncing swells of magic. None of them even know a proper spell, you bet; you haven't seen any of them at the Collegia Arcana. Wastes of potential, the lot of them! Even lower than the sort of bitch who would lord her potential over the less well endowed.

You barely hear their yapping. In your imagination, the babble inanities like "Oh, you look like you got a scrape. Let me kiss it and make it better!" Mikhail is sweet and precious and innocent. The first time he saw a woman naked was when he cut you down from the flag pole. He doesn't even know what pornography is! These vixens... they dare try seduce him with their wiles...!?

What do you do?
>Scare them all off with a flashy cantrip!
>Use [Evaporate] to create a cloud of smoke from the grass, and then run off with him.
>Use [Magic Hand] to make them thing there's an invisible creeper out to grope them while they're distracted!
>Stride up and tell them that he needs to see a medic, and [Levitation] him away
>Use [Enhancement] to make your body stronger, and try to scare them all off!
>Use [Minor Image] to distract them with the likeness of the Glamorous Bardic Sensation Bavid Doughy.
>Something else maybe?

>>6187737
>Stride up and tell them that he needs to see a medic, and [Levitation] him away
Make our presence known that he is taken even if he doesn't know yet

Can magic be stored in the ass as well?
Are all these big-boobied berthas running around with big boobs and no ass?

>>6187862
That's where the sword-arts are stored. Grows with effort.
>>6187737
>Stride up and tell them that he needs to see a medic, and [Levitation] him away

>>6187737
> Stride up and tell them that he needs to see a medic, and [Levitation] him away
Something tells me, if he’s as kind as described he might not appreciate anything vicious done towards others.

>>6187737
>Stride up and tell them that he needs to see a medic, and [Levitation] him away

>>6187737
>Stride up and tell them that he needs to see a medic, and [Levitation] him away

>>6187737
>Use [Minor Image] to distract them with the likeness of the Glamorous Bardic Sensation Bavid Doughy.
He's gonna be singing about Knight Tom in Odd Space.

>>6187737
>>Use [Evaporate] to create a cloud of smoke from the grass, and then run off with him.

File: Floozies.png (2.81 MB, 2240x1280)

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>>6187753
>>6187864
>>6187884
>>6187910
>>6187930
You stride forward and break up the excite before any of those chittering floozies shove their cleavage into Mikhail's face. Your long, flowing dress and floppy sorceress' cap sell a difference in status that parts just as Euterpe parted the seas. Compared to their casual, low cut clothes that follow the fashions of the common folk, you look like an important person on official business. Especially when you raise your staff and let the focusing crystal held within its gnarled cap glow.

"Alright girls, break it up," you tell them, and they obey. Just as father taught you, a flock is easily led if you can show authority. "Give young Master Gorlitsa some room, I'll see him to a medic."

Murmurs of "yes milady," flutter from the young women's mouths as they scatter themselves, not wanting to get in the way of obvious nobility. Well, that part's not a lie, though the House of Ivanova is young and small and in possession of a mere hundred acres. More than many of the gentry who send their spares to the Collegia at Gros-Nichons, but less than many of the older clans like the Gorlitsa.

As the women scatter, you cast [Levitation] upon Mikhail. A scant milliliter of leben gently tickles the crown of your bosom as it flows out of your body. You can stretch such a small quantity further than any of your peers, for you have far less to waste than they do. Following your precise calculations, it shapes itself into the form of [Levitation] and pulls Mikhail into the air.

"Hello Val," Mikhail says with a bright smile, looking up from where you have him floating.

That smile makes all your worries, all the negativity from earlier, evaporate like a puddle in the desert. Softly, you return a happy, "Hello Mick. That was quite the blow you took, wasn't it."

"Eh, Sieg's hit me harder before," he says without a trace of concern for the fact that the tiles have been left in a crater. Mikhail's a durable fellow, you'll give him that. "Like the day we met! I got knocked so far out of the ring that I landed all the way in the Collegia Arcana. The gods' will, that must have been, for it let me save a beautiful maiden from peril."

There's not a single flirtatious tone in his words, Mikhail is simply and happily stating the facts as he sees them. That somehow makes you turn an even deeper shade of red. He's the only man outside of your family who's ever seen you naked, after all...

"Anyways, you can put me down," Mikhail assures you. "I don't need to see Miss Sidelka right now."

"We're not going to Miss Sidelka's office," you tell him.

Where are you taking him?
>A nice little cafe for brunch
>The merchant's quarter for therapy shopping
>To meet up with your friend and her beau
>To the top of the High Tower to watch the boats come in
>To the shore for a nice walk
>To one of those hotels that rents by the hour
>Someplace else?

>>6188035
>The merchant's quarter for therapy shopping

I got a silent wheeze outta the last option.

>>6188035
>>To one of those hotels that rents by the hour

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>>6187933
In an alternate timeline, when you decided to use the refraction [Minor Image] to borrow the likeness of Glamorous Bardic Sensation Bavid Doughy to distract the gaggle of floozies:

Planes Control to Walker Tom
Planes Control to Walker Tom
Drink your elixir and cast [Adaptation]

Planes Control to Walker Tom
Commencing countdown, the Gate's on

Check dilation and the gods' blessings 'pon you

This is Planes Control to Walker Tom
You've really spun the silk

And the broadsheets want to know who's your tailor
Now it's time to cross the threshold if you're sure

This is Walker Tom to Planes Control

I'm stepping 'cross the [Wall]
And I'm sinking through a most peculiar sea
And a million eyes are staring back at me

For here

Am I swimming in the ocean
Past the fragile [Truth]
The gate's so far away
And there's nothing I can say

Though I've sunk past a million fathoms
I feel no pressure now
And I trust my [Guidance] points the way to go!
Tell my wife I love her very much she knows

Planes Control to Walker Tom
Your [Sending's] blocked, there's something wrong
Can you hear me, Walker Tom?
Can you hear me, Walker Tom?
Can you hear me, Walker Tom?
Can you...
Here am I swimming in the ocean
Far beyond the [Truth]
The gate's so far away
And there's nothing I can say

>>6188035
>The merchant's quarter for therapy shopping
I always feel better after spending my hard earned money on skins/gacha/snacks/clothes

>>6188035
>A nice little cafe for brunch

>>6188069
Nice.
I wouldn't be surprised if Mikhail and Valeria got distracted too kek

>>6188035
>To one of those hotels that rents by the hour

>>6188035
>A nice little cafe for brunch
Unless he has preference? The lookout sounds nice as well.

>>6188035
>To one of those hotels that rents by the hour

>>6188035
>A nice little cafe for brunch
These all seem like fun.

>>6188035
>>To one of those hotels that rents by the hour

>>6188035
>The merchant's quarter for therapy shopping

Rolled 65 (1d100)

Oh boy the love hotel won, let me just do a quick roll to see how that goes.

>>6188301
Many things will be swelling

File: Carlotta.png (1.92 MB, 1024x1792)

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>>6188047
>>6188098
>>6188135
>>6188194
"Well there's a nice little hotel down on Sauna Street that rents rooms by the hour," you say before you think better about it. And when you realize what you just said, your mind stops thinking and all of your thoughts just spill out of your mouth in a stream of consciousness. "I've been scoping it out these last couple of weeks for a visit and the beds look really comfortable. Plus each of the rooms have all sorts of nice accoutrements that we could experiment with, I've thought of a few ideas. Oh, and they have an artificial hotsprings with mixed bathing on the grounds, where they infuse a special leben condensate into the water that aids with the bather's, uh... vigor..."

Your head is swimming and you speak far too fast. Mikhail gives you a strange look as all those words spill out of your mouth. By the gods he must think you're some sort of female pervert who likes being naked in public... wait you didn't mention anything like that, oh gods!

"Those hotsprings sound like a lovely afternoon!" Mikhail says. Bless his soul, there's a fire in his eyes that tells you that he has no idea what sort of vigor you meant. Flipping over in the air, he pops your spell and puts his feet on the ground, taking your hand in his own. "I wonder why Sieg never mentioned a place like that. A hotspring that could restore stamina would be amazing after a long day of sparring! We could get right back into the ring afterwards."

"Y-Yeah, that's why they have them..." you say with a blush. When he puts it like that, your mind fills with scenes of the two of you vigorously "sparring" four hours on end.

"Though their business model seems kinda weird," he says, almost catching on. "Who would want to rent a hotel room by the hour? That just doesn't make any sense..."

"Yeah, that is a little odd, isn't it?" you squeak, your face as red as Mikhail's hair.

"Well, I guess we won't know until we get there," Mikhail says. His enthusiasm and curiosity radiate off of him like the sun's heat, and he's clearly trying not to just drag you along as he races down. In fact, before that becomes a problem, he scoops you up into his arms and launches into the air with a mighty leap. "Up you go! Now, can you point out the building for me?"

You can't. No, well, you can, and one arm does, but if you were a tomato before you've suddenly become a piece of iron stolen fresh from the forge. Your blush is so bright that you bury your face in your hands, because you can't take the thought of being seen like this. A strapping young man with all the boundless enthusiasm of an eager puppy, bridal carrying you past the threshold of a Love Hotel? You're really happy, but if anyone saw you like that you'd die.

>>6188357
His landing is gentle on the stone pavers. Your face is still buried in your hands, hiding your smile and your luminescent blush. Muffled by your palms, your voice meeps out, "Don't worry about payment, I have two tickets in my purse."

"Really now~?" You nearly die when you hear a certain woman's voice gently tease you. "I know you asked me to show you where Barry and I go for some alone time, but I didn't know you were making plans... and with Mikhail, of all people! How scandalous, Val~"

"Oh, hi Carlotta! Hi Bart!" Mikhail greets your best friend and her beau as if the two of them weren't on their way for some vigorous alone time in the hotel. As a preferred client, Carlotta even has a room all her own at the top floor, where she hosts some rather spicy ladies' nights for all her closest friends. Mikhail knows nothing of those, of course, though you'll probably tell him later. "You two here for the hotsprings too?"

"You could say that," Bartholomew says with a chuckle.

"Indeed, they are quite nice," Carlotta agrees, though there's amusement in her voice. "And some business afterwards as well. Barry and I recently learned they opened a new facility in the basement, which has a few courses and devices that my usual accommodations here lack. I intend to try them all... and I'm fortunate to have Barry's capable hands to guide me through them."

Bartholomew makes a choking sound. "Carlotta, that's hardly appropriate to-"

"That sounds like it'll be some intense training!" Mikhail chirps like a parakeet. Bless his soul, everything that Carlotta said just flew right over his head. And then he just keeps going without realizing what it sounds like. "Val's only been checking the place out for a couple of weeks now, so I think we'll stick to the standard equipment until we get the hang of it."

Carlotta looks at you with a sparkle in her eye. "Is that right? I wonder... just how far are you going to go now that you've a proper partner, my dear Valeria?"

How do you respond?
>Carlotta's presence has you... not rethinking, but thinking for the first time about all this. There's a nice cafe down the block...
>Mikhail has seen you naked before. Enjoying the hotsprings with him should be fine.
>Well, you did take him to a love hotel, you might as well try your luck in the bedroom. Show his some affection, and maybe an "extra special kiss"?
>In for a penny, in for a pounding. You'll be seducing Mikhail today, come hell or high water! You can do it!
>You are morbidly curious as to what Carlotta meant by the new facilities, and kinda want to try them...
>Something else?

>>6188359
>>In for a penny, in for a pounding. You'll be seducing Mikhail today, come hell or high water! You can do it!

>>6188359
>In for a penny, in for a pounding. You'll be seducing Mikhail today, come hell or high water! You can do it!

I fully expect this to fail but might as well

>>6188359
>In for a penny, in for a pounding. You'll be seducing Mikhail today, come hell or high water! You can do it!

>>6188359
>>>In for a penny, in for a pounding. You'll be seducing Mikhail today, come hell or high water! You can do it!

>>6188359
>>In for a penny, in for a pounding. You'll be seducing Mikhail today, come hell or high water! You can do it!
No half measures

>>6188368
Same but this in one of those rare events where failing sounds fun too

>>6188359
>In for a penny, in for a pounding. You'll be seducing Mikhail today, come hell or high water! You can do it!

>>6188359
>You are morbidly curious as to what Carlotta meant by the new facilities, and kinda want to try them...

>>6188359
>In for a penny, in for a pounding. You'll be seducing Mikhail today, come hell or high water! You can do it!
we ball

>>6188359
>>Mikhail has seen you naked before. Enjoying the hotsprings with him should be fine.
I have a slightly ominous feeling about this plan.
Here's hoping no matter which path they take, Val and Mick won't be disheartened.

>>6188359
>In for a penny, in for a pounding. You'll be seducing Mikhail today, come hell or high water! You can do it!

Rolled 49 (1d100)

Just to see how this goes.

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You came all the way here, right? You endured the embarrassment of being carried by an enthusiastic young man right up to the threshold of such an establishment, haven't you? Not to mention the casual conversation Carlotta decided to make right outside about whatever devious devices she and Bartholomew are going to enjoy tonight! You deserve to take home the prize, even if you're not entirely sure you're ready to win it.

Steeling yourself, you clench a fist and look Carlotta dead in her purple eyes. With resolve that surprises yourself, you say, "As far as we can go."

Mikhail nods vigorously. Without a single passing thought in that pure heart of his, he declares, "And when we reach our limit, we'll go even further beyond!"

If it was possible, you'd turn an even brighter shade of red. Bartholomew chokes back laugh at his friend's obliviousness, nearly collapsing in a fit of coughing that has Mikhail set you down and go check on him. Carlotta simply smiles, giving you a devious look. "Indeed. Well, since it's your first time enjoying these accommodations, I believe a celebratory gift is in order. Juniper, dear~?"

Carlotta rings a little bell at the kiosk, and a woman steps out from behind the curtains. A pair of orange glasses covers her green eyes, and her short cropped hair is kept neat and straight. She wears a nearly obscene parody of a maid outfit where the blouse ends just beneath the collar, allowing her ample bosom to spill out like a pair of udders, kept on the border of decency by two frilled triangles of black silk that struggle to keep them contained with the help of white thongs. Her skin is otherwise left bare all the way down to her hips, where a strangely ordinary skirt and apron cover her from the waist down.

"Yes, honored customer?" she demures, giving Carlotta a deep curtsy.

"Bartholomew and I shall be sampling the delights of your new facilities," Carlotta explains. Juniper nods in understanding, waiting for Carlotta to continue. "However, my dear friend finds herself in need of a room for today's activities. Could you prepare my personal suite to receive her? I would like her first time making use of your establishment to be... special."

"Of course, honored customer," Juniper says. She eyes you and Mikhail with a small measure of amusement before asking Carlotta, "Shall I set up your special equipment for them?"

Mikhail perks up in interest at the words "special equipment". Before he can agree, Carlotta comes to your rescue and says, "No need. It's their first time enjoying your facilities. Best to take things slow."

"Understood, honored customer," Juniper says with a nod, though her eyes continue to twinkle with amusement. She pulls a key out from her cleavage and tells you and Mikhail, "Please follow me, I shall show you to your accommodations."

>>6189157
The two of you get led through the halls of the Love Hotel, dimly lit by glowstones set in a red lantern. A sweet perfumed smell wafts through the air, hiding the stench of the sordid deeds that occur behind each of the doors you pass. You can feel the modulations of silence upon the walls, perfectly shutting out the noise that lovers make in their copulation. In its place a wordless song thrums through the building, with an elegant yet erotic rhythm that pulls your heart along with it until you find that its beats match the rhythm of the music.

Mikhail's eyes take in everything with eagerness underlined by confusion, no doubt wondering what sort of training this place offers. When you reach the levitator doors that will take you up to the top of the building, he asks, "So why does this place rent by the hour, anyways? Seems like an odd business model..."

"Most people don't have the vigor to go for more than an hour or two," Juniper explains to him. She puts in the special code that will take you straight to Carlotta's suite. "Though if they're too worn out to leave by the end of it, we do have a special nightly rate that discounts the room."

"Ah, that makes sense," Mikhail says, nodding in understanding. It's a shame he doesn't get it at all. "You get your work out in, and then if it's late you can sleep over."

Juniper smiles as she watches you squirm. Mikhail's innocence is endearing... but right now, it's terminally embarrassing! "Yes, something like that."

The levitator arrives at Carlotta's suite with the chime of a bell.

On one end of the room, a steaming hottub is set into the floor, with a grand window that overlooks a coastline filled with sails and steam-stacks as boats pour into the town port. At the other end, outside the splash-zone, a trail of rose petals leads to a heart-shaped bed that's nearly as large as your entire dormitory at the Collegia Arcana. Doors leading to a washroom flank either side of the entry hall. Carlotta's own paintings decorate the walls, ones that you recognize from the many ladies' nights that she's hosted.

You recognize everyone depicted from her broad circle of friends, or at least the ones she managed to talk out of their clothes and into her bed for the evening for some... how did she put it... platonic intimacy that only women could partake in. Your face turns red when you catch sight of the portrait she made of you, one night when you got deep into your cups. Levitating above the hottub, the sunset at your back, a stern expression on your face... and not a stitch of clothing on your person!

"...This reminds me of Father's private gallery," Mikhail says, a slight frown upon his face. His eyes widen at the sheer size of the bed. "And that bed is gigantic!"

>>6189159
"Yes, it is more convenient for our honored customer's activities," Juniper says without missing a beat. Her nose wrinkles slightly, looking at Mikhail. "I would recommend you wash off before you begin. The washrooms are there for your convenience. Should require assistance in setting up any equipment, or if you would like someone to join you in your activities, our staff will be happy to lend you any aid you require. Simply ring the bell."

Mikhail gives her an odd look as she leaves. "Why would you want to wash up before working up a sweat? Well, I guess she'd be the expert, so..."

With a shrug, he heads into the washroom on the right to freshen up. You're not entirely sure how to feel about that. On the one hand, you kind of like how he smells when he's worked up a sweat. On the other hand it does end up getting old rather quick, it's much better when it's fresh... oh gods what are you even thinking about?

Well, there's no backing down now, not when you've gotten this far! You just need to put on your birthday suit, march on over to that amazingly soft heart-shaped bed, and pose as seductively as you can manage. You might be a maiden at 26 years, but even your lanky, titless body has to have some charm to it, dammit! You'll charm him right out of his pants, and he won't be able to resist taking you to pound town!

Pound town, really??? You know people say stupid things when they're horny, but why would even think something like-

"Uh, Val?" Mikhail's voice fills the silence of the room, snapping you out of your thoughts. "Why are you naked?"

You stare at him in disbelief.

He stares at you in confusion.

Gods bless you, why and how have you fallen for someone who is so monumentally dense. Still, you don't have the courage to just ask him to take your virginity right here and right now. Instead, you tell him, "Well... you saw me like this when we first met, three years ago. A lot of guys wouldn't have had the restraint to just cut me down and lend me their coat, you know? But we've known eachother for a while, now, and..."

You swallow dryly. You still can't bring yourself to say it out loud. So instead you tell him, "If there was anything you stopped yourself from doing back then, because you wanted to be a gentleman... you can do it now, if you want. In fact, I think I'd like that..."

MIkhail lets the towel around his waist drop.

Oh wow. How come his bodysuit doesn't show that off, huh? It deserves some recognition!

As you're pondering his mighty sword, he approaches you, looking down at you with a frown on his face. His emerald eyes drink in every inch of your body with a thirst that makes you extremely happy. Leaning over you, he gets awfully close. So close that you almost think he's going to lean in the last few inches and plant a kiss upon your lips. You feel his strong hands grasp your upper arms, making you feel so helpless yet so safe in his grip. And then...!

>>6189163
Then he tosses you up into the air.

He calls his sword up from the ground and calls out the name of an esoteric sword art, one of the more obscure techniques documented as part of the Ruby Lemniscate. With a dozen cuts, he tears the very real-of-the-world that surrounds you into a dozen pieces, causing the fabric of the world-texture to temporarily unravel. When he sheathes his broadsword with a click, the reality-holes burst into a cloud of pink smoke, and...

You're left in a set of incredibly fuzzy pink pajamas, the soft fabric covered in a happy pattern of strawberries. A set of cozy slippers suddenly wrap themselves around your feet, but Mikhail does not stop there. In the blink of an eye, he's caught you and set you down upon a plush lounge chair, and pushes a cup of fresh cocoa into your hands.

"You looked so cold back then," he explains, a bright smile on his face. You can't be mad at him when he gets like this, even if the part of your brain thinking with your lower lips is incredibly annoyed with him. His cheer is far too infectious, but it's clear that it can't be helped. "I thought I'd embarrass you if I made a scene with my sword arts back then, but... even if this room's less chilly than a winter's night, I'm glad I got to warm you up!"

You take a long sip of the cocoa. It's delicious.

You really wish he warmed you up another way. Unfortunately, it looks like you need to take matters into your own hands.

With a sudden snap, you stand up from the lounge chair. Most other men, you would have loomed over with your tall and lanky height; a six foot one, you're a giant among women. Mikhail is one of the few who crests you by more than an inch. He and his older brother nearly reach seven feet tall. Still, you have enough height on you to put him on the back foot as you poke him on the chest and tell him: "You are wonderful, Mikhail."

A devious smile crosses your face. Something has given you enough courage to tell him, "Now sit down, and let me show you my thanks, okay?"

=================

The QM owes you a pastebin of this scene. Unfortunately, tonight's update is already too long.

>>6189166
"Wow..." Mikhail groans, completely spent.

You pout a little bit. How could one man have so much inside of him? He made a complete mess out of your face and your hair, once it became too much for you to swallow. Not that you weren't messy yourself, but you just left a puddle on the floor rather than getting all that gunk in your hair! Mercifully, Carlotta keeps her washroom well stocked with everything you need to clean yourself off... knowing her tastes, you suppose the messes she and Bartholomew make must make what you and Mikhail just got up to look like a small matter.

Peaking out from the washroom once you de-gunked your hair and face, you ask him, "Was it good?"

"Yes," he says emphatically. "Yes it was. We should do that more often..."

"We should," you agree. With a devious smile, you say, "Maybe some night we can go get ourselves a nice dinner, and spend the night with one another? Cuddle up on a nice, cozy bed, and let things go the way they may...?"

Mikhail looks at you with a stone serious face, and says, "No can do. Men and women aren't supposed to share a bed unless they're married."

You stare at him in mild disbelief, and then let out laughter like a pealing bell. "Right, I suppose that's true. Maybe we can take care of that in a few years? Before I'm thirty, please."

You have consumed 50mL of badra via intimacy. It is a fleeting power, how do you spend it?
>Increase the amount of badra you can store in reserve (0mL to 50mL)
>Increase the amount of badra you can benefit from each week (50mL to 100mL)
>Increase your leben reserves by 2mL.
>Increase your leben flow by 1mL/hour
[Insufficient badra to increase Swell Magnitude]

>>6189166
>"You looked so cold back then,"
God bless his pure gentleman heart even though we are acting like a coven of succubi..but having said that

>The QM owes you a pastebin of this scene. Unfortunately, tonight's update is already too long.
You absolutely owns us a pastebin qm and I'll remind you of that kek
>>6189167
Still I can't believe it worked, victory to the bold.

>Increase the amount of badra you can benefit from each week (50mL to 100mL)
Feels like we can get better upgrades in the long run with this one

>>6189167
>Increase the amount of badra you can benefit from each week (50mL to 100mL)
lol

>>6189167
>Increase the amount of badra you can benefit from each week (50mL to 100mL)

>"No can do. Men and women aren't supposed to share a bed unless they're married."
lmao, based dense husbando

>>6189185
Val is not part of a coven of succubi. Her best friend just happens to be a degenerate noblewoman that, if her advances are not denied firmly and clearly, will sweep everyone along for a ride.

Pastebin will probably come on the weekend.

It's only a partial success, no actual seggs occurred, Val just got to suck his (to her, very tasty) dick.

Also, don't expect most "badra consumption" to occur on screen. Though now that you have a consistent (and enthusiastic) partner, you'll be able to obtain badra regularly and max out your benefit (for now). In return, you're also buffing Mikhail in moments of intimacy with some of your leben flowing into him. Though right now, you're benefitting a lot more than him.

Male Warrior/Female Sorcerer pairings are incredibly strong in this setting because if they're intimate with one another, they will slowly strengthen eachother. Val stands to benefit a lot because she's kinda weak.
>>6189220
Each of these will help you roughly equally. Note that you cannot save badra unless you're able to store it. Expect about 100mL a day while you're in a relationship with Mikhail.
>>6189222
That's Mikhail's downside as a partner, from a "badra absorption" standpoint. He won't do the most efficient acts of mana transfer until you're married. As a plus side, he will never betray you unless you fuck up badly, and has so much badra to give that you'll hardly notice.

>>6189167
>>Increase your leben reserves by 2mL.

Let's get our booba

>>6189167
>Increase the amount of badra you can store in reserve (0mL to 50mL)

Right now we can store: None.
We need to be able to store: Some

>>6189167
>>Increase the amount of badra you can store in reserve (0mL to 50mL)

>>6189167
>>Increase the amount of badra you can benefit from each week (50mL to 100mL)

>>6189167
>Increase the amount of badra you can benefit from each week (50mL to 100mL)

Get this upgrade, then we're at 50/100 for the week. That lets us have a round two before next week to get the store in reserve upgrade.

Very excellent writing, QM. Reminds me of Lady Knight Quest and Mage Quest.

>>6189167
To be clear: "benefit from each week" means the amount we can absorb to 'level up' with, right? Not our throughput or anything else? We can't use badra yet presumably, because we can't store it. Though honestly, if we didn't lack the training, I would say just become a warrior or whatever uses badra. We can gain reserves of it much faster than we can leben, apparently.

>Increase the amount of badra you can benefit from each week (50mL to 100mL)

May as well go with the long play, for now.

>>6189167
>Increase the amount of badra you can benefit from each week (50mL to 100mL)

File: Our Heroine (Clothes).jpg (327 KB, 1280x2240)

327 KB JPG

You and Mikhail spend the remainder of the afternoon going between the hot tub and the lounge chairs. Nothing proceeds further than you've already gone, though you do get to enjoy another tasty treat before you leave. Mikhail also gets to enjoy the taste of your flower before you go. It is quite nice, but you think you enjoy giving than you do receiving in this case; after all, giving is its own reward, is it not?

You have consumed an additional 50 mL of badra. How do you spend it?
>Increase the amount of badra you can store in reserve (0mL to 50mL)
>Increase your leben reserves by 2mL.
>Increase your leben flow by 1mL/hour
You have reached your maximum badra consumption for the week.
[Insufficient badra to increase Swell Magnitude]

Juniper smirks watching the two of you leave. The two of you came in as friends and left the building as lovers, and it shows in how close you keep to Mikhail, how attentive Mikhail is to your movement. You cannot say that you're unhappy right now, even when you and Mikhail need to part for the evening.

Even with your flat chest and limited leben, no one is foolish enough to accost a sorceress carrying her staff. Even in the grungier part of town where the red-light district sits, people are not so foolish.

A few men do try their luck in calling out to you.

That's new. Or perhaps it's the first time you registered it. You've only been to this part of town with Carlotta, so perhaps a group of girls led by one who outshines them all intimidates them? Still, it makes you kind of happy, to know that even your lanky lackluster body can attract attention.

Though it would be nicer if they were more handsome. A few of them have nice muscles, but most have questionable tastes in facial hair... or lack the means to keep it neat and trimmed.

You have a few hours before you need to return to the Collegia Arcana. With the run of the town, what do you do?
>Go visit one of your friends and bug them for snacks, affection, and gossip
>Head to the library to find something to read.
>Visit the guild to check the quest board for copper quests.
>Go to the docks to get some practical experience with modulation to handle crates.
>Go to the lighthouse to get some practical experience with refraction signaling sandbars.
>Go to the junkyard and see if there's anything that might be worth practicing your purification on.
>Go to meat-packing distract to help freeze-dry meats with practical condensation.
>Something else?

>>6189760
>>Head to the library to find something to read.

>>6189760
>Visit the guild to check the quest board for copper quests.

>>6189760
>Increase the amount of badra you can store in reserve (0mL to 50mL)
>Go to meat-packing distract to help freeze-dry meats with practical condensation.

>>6189760
>Increase your leben reserves by 2mL.

And now to increase our booba-Imeanmagicalmight!

...

Ahem.

>Go to meat-packing distract to help freeze-dry meats with practical condensation.

It's boring, it's not lore, or prep, or gossip, or fun, but it is practice and money(?).

>>6189167
>>Increase the amount of badra you can benefit from each week (50mL to 100mL)
Seems like this is the one we will have to increase to 700 ASAP as QM said we will average at 100 per day while in a relationship with Mikhail.

>>6189760
>Increase the amount of badra you can store in reserve (0mL to 50mL)

>Go to the docks to get some practical experience with modulation to handle crates.

Rolled 51 (1d100)

Calling it for freeze drying and rolling to see if anything interesting happens on the job.
>>6189427
Well thank you very much!
>>6189436
>Though honestly, if we didn't lack the training, I would say just become a warrior or whatever uses badra. We can gain reserves of it much faster than we can leben, apparently.
Badra and Leben are less "the energy you use to accomplish [thing]" and more the Male and Female spiritual energies. Badra is "Seed" in Arabic, Leben is "Milk" in Egyptian Arabic. Production of each is more or less locked to your physical sex rather than your gender expression.

Females cannot use badra directly, but can use it to increase their own strength. Likewise, males cannot use leben directly, using it to increase their own strength. Transfer requires trust and affection between the partners, otherwise the energy is rejected and dispersed.

Thus why, say, a sorceress taken as a toy by orcs would not eventually become strong enough to break free, unless she no longer wanted to break free. Likewise, a male knight taken as a "pet" by a Lamia would not grow stronger from the affections she forces upon him, unless he's into that shit and falls for her.

Misunderstanding the trust required to allow the exchange to occur during intimacy leads a surprising amount of female warriors to become barracks bunnies. The fact that many successful female warriors have enough rapport with their male comrades to have a successful exchange with multiple men at once also confuses the issue. Hormones being what they are, they also often end up stumbling into such a rapport as well, which then reinforces this less efficient behavior as a good idea.

As for warriors in general, the floor is lower. The guild needs a sorceress to be able to cast certain spells consecutively to gain an official license. Meanwhile, the basic physical training needed to become a lower rank fighter is something you don't even need to use your leben for. Sword Arts that would use your leben are considered gravy on top.

Most women who get in then end up going the barracks bunny route to improve their strength, unless they're a noblewoman or otherwise have a fiance to "grow" with.
>>6189917
As he is now, yes. As you get stronger from him, he will get stronger from you, which will up that cap. You're a long ways away from being able to do that (it will start happening when you hit 50 leben in your reserves).

File: Bandit Keith and his Merry Men.png (2.97 MB, 2240x1280)

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You have some Apprentice Hours left for the month, now that you remember it. Might as well get them out of the way while you're already in town.

The Collegia Arcana partners with several local businesses in Port Caplan to provide the services of sorceresses-in-training. Most of the work is trivial things, practical uses of the fundamentals taught across the nine towers. After eight years of study, you could easily fulfill any of the apprentice tasks, though you do prefer to stick to your four areas of specialization. In those arts, you can stretch your meager leben further than even the Grand Mistress of those towers.

Plus, you've charted how much each task pays, and your four tend to always be near the top. Taking your sending stone from your purse, you call up a figment of the posted Apprentice Tasks to see where your hours are best spent.

Apprentice Tasks
Black Tower - Modulation - The dockworker's guild requires assistance of a modulator to offload crates - Pay of 600 Marks
Red Tower - Decomposition - The wasteman's guild requests assistance from a decomposer to break down this month's waste - Pay of 750 Marks
Orange Tower - Oscillation - The manufactor's guild requests the aid of an oscillator in charting repetitive work tasks - Pay of 700 Marks
Gold Tower - Refraction - The shorekeeper's guild requires assistance of a refractor to mark out dangerous sandbars - Pay of 840 Marks
Green Tower - Propagation - The yeoman's guild requests the assistance of a propagator to increase seed stock of a new wheat variant - Pay of 350 Marks
Blue Tower - Condensation - The meat packer's guild requires the assistance of a condenser to process this month's harvest - Pay of 900 Marks
Indigo Tower - Circulation - The healer's guild requests the assistance of circulators in the St. Pious Tauma Center - Pay of 800 Marks
Violet Tower - Diffusion - The miner's guild has requested a diffuser to transfer Far-Depths Curses from their equipment to a sacrificial object - Pay of 400 Marks
White Tower - Purification - The goldsmith's guild has requested a purifier to assist in tuning their standards for gold purity assays - Pay of 850 Marks

Boring as it sounds, helping the meat packers with the harvest pays the most, and lets you process. The ups and downs of your day have gone from one extreme to the other, rewarding you for your daring just as it punished you for your existence.

The Meat Packer's Guild is located near the southern gate, opposite the docks. A massive series of warehouses lined up against the town walls, packed together as tightly as books upon a shelf. The building you enter is an amalgamation of three, where stations go from slaughtering the animals brought in all the way through butchering and packing when needed.

>>6190439
Most of it goes into little clay pots, sealed simply and safely with a cap of clarified butter that keeps out air and infection from the freshly boiled meats. Those will be capped with propagated kerchiefs inked with an expiry and sold to general stores relatively cheaply. The choicest cuts get put on ice for the sale of fresh meats at the market tomorrow. Your apprentice work lies with the least desirable fresh cuts, which soak in a thick marinade before being passed to you.

Some might call dehydration a cantrip of cantrips, a simple use of condensation's basics that hardly qualifies as a spell.

You do not. Casting a cantrip would actually leave you somewhat drained. Drawing water from something dead that has it in such abundance barely sips at your teats for the leben you need to accomplish the task. You hardly need your focus, but with it the sip becomes even less than that, so little spent that you don't feel a thing. Something living would naturally resist, and drain you quite swiftly, but meat offers you none and drains you even less.

The best part being that you turn the wasted, least desirable cuts into a treasured delicacy for hunters, soldiers, and travelers. Keep it dry in its waxed bag, and the jerky you produce today will last as long as the potted meat, without the fragile container. Certainly it won't be as soft, but for people on the move it is perfection.

Plus, in addition to your pay, you get to take some of the bags where they botched the marinade home with you. Someone always ends up adding too much vinegar or cayenne to the mix at some point during the course of the night, and making it too sour or spicy for the general market.

Their loss is your gain. You like sour and spicy.

With those safely away in your purse, you head home near midnight. Which, unfortunately, is around the time when the other shoe decides to drop and drag your day back down into the muck with a near perfect bookend.

Three men have decided to accost you. Three men with knives, bandanas, and the markings of the MAXX Gang on their haphazard armor. Their leader, wearing a red bandana on his head in contrast to his companion's white, points his knife at you.

"Surrender your stuff..."

What do you do?
>Surrender some of the jerky. You have plenty, and they'll regret taking it.
>Use the Levitation modulation to get up high and out of their reach.
>Use the Dancing Lights refraction to signal the Night's Watch for some help.
>Enhance your dress to become as hard as ironsilk and run away.
>Fight them off with Ice Shot.
>Something else?

>>6190442
>>Use the Levitation modulation to get up high and out of their reach.

>>6190442
>Enhance your dress to become as hard as ironsilk and run away.

>>6190442
>Use the Dancing Lights refraction to signal the Night's Watch for some help.
We could get some extra coins if there is a bounty on them and we help the local guards to do an arrest

>>6190442
>Use the Dancing Lights refraction to signal the Night's Watch for some help.

>>6190442
>Use the Dancing Lights refraction to signal the Night's Watch for some help.

>>6190442
>Use the Dancing Lights refraction to signal the Night's Watch for some help.

>>6190442
>>Surrender some of the jerky. You have plenty, and they'll regret taking it.

Meh, like with the Quuen B at the start, we don't have the magic to waste getting in trouble, and no magic at all to get out of trouble. Actually, the worst part isn't even that we're a three-cantrip pony, it's that we start getting mana exhaustion the moment we cast even the first one, so most options here will leave us winded. So best to just hand them some food. If we can spin this into a valuable contact later, neat. And if they get touchy, we ice 'em. No use wasting leben.

Rolled 57 (1d100)

>>6190500
>>6190513
>>6190841
>>6190967
Rolling to get an idea of how this goes.

I got caught up in things today and will not be able to post tonight.

>>6191243
No worries QM

File: =Imaginary Technique= Flaregun.png (2.44 MB, 2240x1280)

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>>6190500
>>6190513
>>6190841
>>6190967
You'd rather not.

For starters, you know that if you give thugs like these an inch, they're prone to taking a mile. "Surrender your stuff" has an unfortunate tendency to become "you're coming with us" when you're a woman or a nobleman. You happen to be both, though the Masterly House of Ivanova is merely given the title of Esquire. That and your rather unappealing body will protect you from the bandits' lusts if you just go along with them, for sure, but...

You'd rather not. You got pushed around enough this morning to last you a week. Besides which, there's something funny about the way they speak that put you on edge. Folk from all over the Middle Kingdom find their way to Port Caplan thanks to the Five Collegia within its walls. Accents range from your own North Isriken to those native to the southron deserts of Plamyan. These men try to imitate the way those of Port Caplan speak the King's Tongue, and they get just close enough to it that the subtle differences are jarring.

Fortunately, you're a sorceress. That alone is enough to spook off most ne'er-do-wells, even if all you can cast are a handful of cantrips.

Cycling your leben through your right hand activates the only piece of jewelry that you wear, a simple silver signet ring that bears the Ivanovan Snowflake and a small ruby. A Light shoots out from the gem and shifts into the shape of the staff that serves as your magic focus. The thugs each take a hesitant step back when they see the the staff take shape. The two subordinates almost look like they whant to ask their boss if they really should be messing with you.

"How wonderful. I've been looking for test subjects," you lie through your teeth. A smile crosses your face as you see the two in the back cowering, while their leader's knife switches to a more defensive stance. Sweat runs down his brow, his eyes locked on you, his feet sliding backwards slowly. Uncertain but steady, a combination rarely seen in your common bandit. "You gentlemen shall have the honor of witnessing an original spell, never before seen in the modern era..."

"Uh, Cap'n...?" one of the thugs stammers out. Interesting, his accent slipped back to normal. It is from a land outside the Middle Kingdom, thick with the brogue of the Kamen people. "I don't wanna get turned to anything unnatural...!"

Their captain weighs something in his mind. His hand goes behind his back, no doubt to flash them some hidden signal. Brave of them to obey, darting to the side alleys. He keeps his fake accent up, telling you to, "Do your worst, witch!"

>>6191624
"I shall," you say, allowing some of your leben to flow into your eyes, making them glow like a lantern caught in ten thousand years of ice. You take your own steps back, as if to build distance for an attack that might destroy the alleyway. "Reflect the waveform as it extends into infinity, let it refract as it passes between the real and the unreality! In the eternal moment as they resolve to the limit of zero, push out an imaginary mass through the root of the negative!"

Your staff glows as if roiling with unspoken power, gathering the very light of the stars into its core. Among the aetheric nebulae cast by the jewel, reflections of the galaxy and even the greater beyond within the tapestry of darkness dance in a furious rotation about the center of the universe. Such a bright light is cast by the astral symphony that you can see the captain's companions skid to a halt as they rush to flank you.

Their eyes wide with despair. Their daggers clattering to the ground. The acrid stench of urine as the two of them piss themselves in fear. Their comrade shows his mettle, frozen as he may be, ready to face head on this spell with whatever blade techniques he knows.

Refraction is a handy school of magic.

Among other things, you can make an impressive looking lightshow while hardly spending even a whiff of your leben.

"Imaginary Technique:" You intone with dreadful seriousness. The two bandits fall to their knees, collapsing in the puddle of their own filth. Their commander clenches and grits his teeth, his mind racing to survive whatever spell you intend to throw at him. You have no intention of letting him down. Making of show of effort, you raise your staff high above your head, all the power you can extract from a single milliliter of leben thrumming in its jewel. "Dancing Lights!"

With a happy woosh, a firework launches into the air and bursts with sound. A cute chibi sketch of your panicked face drawn with stars lights up the sky, alongside it the pattern every student of the Collegia Arcana learns to signal the guards if they're in trouble.

"Huh?" the suspicious commander stares up at the signal in disbelief.

"Huh?" his companions boggle at the fact that they're still alive.

By the time the three of them regain their wits, you're long gone from the alleyway and back to the main road. Unfortunately, your little light show appears to have pissed them off enough that they refuse to slink back into the shadows. It gave you a nice lead to run away, and certainly alerted the town guard, but this deep into the warehouse district the response time tends to be a bit slow. That lead erodes swiftly, as you're not exactly the most athletic woman in the world.

"You damnry witch!" the suspicious captain has been consumed by such a rage that his fake accent fell off as he screams after you. "I'll gut you like the catch of the day, when I catch up with you!"

File: Siegfried fon Dovastad.png (3.07 MB, 1280x2240)

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>>6191626
You turn back to see that soiled britches or not, all three of them are giving a furious chase, their daggers raised with violent intent. Looking back was a mistake, as you don't catch a missing pavestone. With a twist of your ankle, you let out a meep as you tumble to the ground. Your eyes clench shut, ready for the impact and whatever those thugs intend for you.

But the impact never comes. A pair of strong arms catches you before you fall and steadies you on your feet. The chiding voice that accompanies them is a familiar rumble, deep and powerful as a bear. "You should be more careful, Valeria. My foolish little brother would be quite upset if you hurt yourself."

Your eyes open to see a man in black ironsilks interpose himself between you and the thugs giving chase. A sleeveless red greatcoat flutters on his back, emblazoned with the Gull of Port Caplan carrying a sword in its talons; the sigil of Lord Caplan's personal guard. In his left hand he clutches a silver broadsword that reflects the light of the moon. His right he keeps behind his back, as if in mockery of the men who stand before him. Red hair slowly fading into ashen grey crowns his head, bound low in a loose ponytail.

Not your dear, sweet Mikhail, no. No, this is a man of cold forged iron, the unparalleled genius of the sword taken into Lord Caplan's personal guard at the tender age of ten years old. If not the deadliest man on the continent, then one amongst a handful of men and women whose worth upon the battlefield would exceed an entire legion. The older brother whose shadow Mikhail forever chases after: Siegfried.

Siegfried does not turn his head back towards you when he says, "You are a gentle soul, Valeria. Close your eyes or take your leave of this place. What is to follow shall stain your soul if you see it."

The suspicious captain and his subordinates stumble to a halt. Wary as they were with you, but filled with a confidence they should not have. After all, if you were only blowing hot air, why should they believe Siegfried is anything but another actor playing the tough? Perhaps if they knew his name and face, they would flee and never return. Or perhaps they would simply refuse to believe it's anything but another ruse.

Either way, they are dead men walking. They just don't know it yet. The captain even has the gall to demand, "Ach, and who in the nine hells are you supposed to be?"

Siegfried's expression remains flat and focused. Without confidence, without self assurance, simply stating the facts as they are, his voice rumbles deep as the ocean's crashing tides in answer.

"Your executioner."

What do you do?
>Run
>Close your eyes.
>Watch.
>Something else?

>>6191627
>Close your eyes.

>>6191627
>Close your eyes.
He did ask nicely.

>>6191627
>>Watch

>>6191627
>Close your eyes.

>>6191627
>>Close your eyes.

>>6191627
>Watch
What if he needs help?

>>6191910
>What if he needs help?
Then he is a jobber ngl

>>6191627
>>Close your eyes.
He's right, we could do without the baggage. Also, this makes me very glad the other anons played it straight with Mikhail so far, Siegfried is probably rather protective of his slightly-too-naive little bro.

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>>6191630
>>6191638
>>6191642
>>6191871
>>6192153
A part of you wants to watch. You are not some child who quivers at shadows and sees monsters in the dark. You've helped herd cattle and sheep in for the slaughter, seen them processed from cute and fluffy creatures into meat for Port Caplan's supper tables. Blood and gore do not bother you much. In fact, you have a fascination for anatomy and dissection that makes you wonder if there isn't something wrong with you some days.

But those are animals.

These are people.

You clench your eyes shut like Siegfried told you, and clap your hands over your ears. Leben flows through your body in a cantrip of cantrips that comes as easily as evaporation, centering upon your hands and refracting away all sound and leaving you death to the screams that are certain to come...

===

Commander Sinead mac Cumhaill snorted as the greying swordsman declared himself his executioner. Oh, he might be a hardy man in his middle ages, but the grey of his hair sung of how his best days lay behind him. Sinead and his boys were young, strong, and skilled. Each of them men in the prime of their life sworn to serve the Shamrock Throne, the loyal hands of Queen Medb. Each of them known for their discretion enough to be trusted with this secret mission, the opening act to her Majesty's reconquest.

In short they were the best of the best. This old man had no business interfering in their work.

Yet all the same, something about the man set him on edge.

The interloper looked back at the damnry witch, curled up like a child told that what she could not see could not hurt her. The thought of her earlier tomfoolery made Sinead seethe. He and his would not be put on the backfoot by another confident mummer pretending at power again tonight. So he shoved that uncertainty into the back of his head and readied his knife.

"Move along, old man," he growled. "It's three on one, and we have a quota to fill. Let us take that damned witch, and-"

"Commander Sinead mac Cumhaill, serial number 1048298," the man interrupted Sinead with information that he should not have known. "Born in the village of Carlon's Vale to Aife and Fionn mac Cumhaill. Raised in the miller's trade, but as a second son sought glory in the life of a soldier. Your first command came on the banks of the Blackwater, wherein you rallied the Raiders Ua Dionha after the Dread Pirate Daire ua Dionha took an arrow to the throat.

"Did you know that the young woman you took as a prize that night gave birth to a healthy baby girl nine months later?" he asked something absurd. Sinead didn't keep track of all the bastards he'd sewn across the years. "She couldn't bring herself to kill the babe. She and her childhood sweetheart are raising her as their own. You'll be happy to know that your daughter has a large family, with many siblings who love her."

"That's a nice story, old man," Sinead growled. "What's your point?"

>>6192450
"I know everything about you and your men, including your vile work in the slums." The fire-haired interloper tilts his head, staring at Sinead with emerald eyes that seemed to glow with a frosty dispassion in the light of the moon. Sinead's mind raced. If this man knew of their work, who else did. "You are lucky that I detest violence, or for that alone your heads would already be forfeit. Run from here, leave this town and crawl back to the Queen of Worms upon her contemptible throne. Tell her that the Iron Dove offers her an olive branch, that her actions can be overlooked so long as she leaves this town out of her ambitions."

"Those are some pretty words, but can you back them up?" Sinead looked as his men. Their resolve remained strong. The damnry witch played them all for fools, and they wouldn't get swept up in the bravado of a middle-aged man. He leveled his dagger, falling into an aggressive stance, "I've me doubts!"

Sinead and his men charged as one, their knives high and their movements crisp. One aimed low, one aimed high, and Sinead himself went for the center of mass. The dogpile tactics of the Raiders Ua Dionha, known for attacking like a pack of hounds and killing warriors of great renown. The greying swordsman would be no different.

Except he was.

He moved as if he knew exactly where each of their slashes would land before their muscles so much as twitched. Their steel fangs glittered in the moonlight, catching nothing but air. The man flowed like water between the gaps in their coordination, evading slash and stab and cut as if their assault was nothing more than a well coordinated stance. His sword never left its scabbard. His only counterattack came with an open hand, shoving them about and making them stumble.

He effortlessly controlled the battlefield. The longer they fought him, the more that Sinead realized: he and men were horrifically outmatched.

So he did the one thing he knew would hurt the bastard, and flung his knife. Not at him, the man would dodge out of the way without a second thought. No, Sinead abandoned the prize he came for this night with a perfect toss for the heart of the damnry witch. His knife soared like an arrow through the moonlight, too swift and true for the old man to intercept.

His dagger rammed through her chest... and caught upon the fabric of the world. All the Sinead saw seemed to get tugged through the opening his dagger made in the world, as if it were a curtain being pulled through a hole. The pull of the curtain revealed the night of the Blackwater, except-

>>6192451
Something was wrong. The battle was over. His men should be celebrating their great triumph! Feasting upon the stores of the village folk, carrying off their gold and silver back to Kamen as tribute for their beloved queen. Enjoy the supple bodies of the village women atop the corpses of their husbands and brothers, as all true conquerors are owed! Yet... yet... this was wrong! This wasn't what he remembered.

A blood moon hung in the sky.

A tree of corpses stood in the village square, its branches thick and mighty. All of his men hung like common brigands from that tree. Their bodies swayed in the wind, looking like nothing more than the macabre fruits of war. A flock of doves picked them over, their pure-white feathers stained red with gore.

"You are fortunate that I am a man of peace, Sinead," the man's voice rumbled, whispering in his ear. Sinead could not bring himself to turn back to see the face of the interloper. "A violent man would have killed you for that. Though I have to wonder... how long were under the delusion that our fight was real? Did you think I would leave my dear good-sister's safety to chance? No, my foolish little brother will need someone to lean on, with all that is to come. Did you think I would allow a brute like you to harm a single hair upon her head?"

"What... what are you?" Sinead's voice trembled. "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU!?"

"I already told you," the man chided. "I am your executioner."

Sinead fell. He felt the noose around his neck as he joined his men upon the killing tree. His neck snapped, his breath choked, and yet for all of that his body would not die, his soul would not pass on. He hung there for what felt like hours, gasping for a breath that would not come. In the shadow of the blood moon, wading through the flooding of the Blackwater, that man and his baleful emerald eyes emerged from the mist.

"Rapist. Murderer. Reaver. All of these high crimes in the sight of the Throne Under Heaven." The man looked up at Sinead's choking body, contempt upon his face. "I detest the violence of this world, Commander Sinead. It makes victims of us all, both the reaver and the reaved. For the reaver must reave to fill his belly, and the reaved must take up arms to defend themselves. As your fellow victim and perpetrator, I feel that I must at least promise you this:"

Sinead stared in horror as the man looked him in the eye and said, "What you receive here shall only be commensurate to your crimes against your fellow man."

The noose broke. Sinead fell again through the bleak waters of the Blackwater. The sharks found his body and began to tear and all he could do was scream voicelessly into oblivion.

"Now, Commander Sinead, I have a few questions that I'd like you to answer..."

>>6192452
===

You wake up in your dormitory flat on your bed, still wearing your clothes from last night. Did Siegfried bring you home after the encounter you had with those bandits? Or was it all just a strange dream that you had after getting home from the Meat Packer's Guild? Everything feels like such a blur, though you're pretty sure that some jackass from the Kamenlands tried to mug you. The prick.

Your stomach rumbles, begging for breakfast.

Where do you go for breakfast?
>You have few jars of yogurt in the cold box. Have that with some fruit and grains.
>The cafeteria always has a nice spread for breakfast. Most importantly, it's free for students.
>There's a nice cafe just outside the gates, though you'll need to wash up first.
>Someplace else, maybe?

>>6192455
Holy edgekino, it is a good thing we closed our eyes. I didn't think Siegfried was being literal when he said the sight would stain our soul.

>The cafeteria always has a nice spread for breakfast. Most importantly, it's free for students.

I like yogurt, but I like free stuff more.

>>6192455
>>The cafeteria always has a nice spread for breakfast. Most importantly, it's free for students.

Hahahawhathtefuck.

>>6192455
Guess he didn’t need help after all. Pretty badass.


>The cafeteria always has a nice spread for breakfast. Most importantly, it's free for students.
Let’s hope the bullies have something else to do.

>>6192455
>>The cafeteria always has a nice spread for breakfast. Most importantly, it's free for students.
I reiterate my previous point. That Fate-weaving art that runs in their family is a lot more than fancy sword techniques, turns out. So much worse.
Honestly, I'm not even sure there would have been much to see beyond them flopping around on the ground screaming.
But hey, big bro says we're good for Mikhail, so that's good! Don't like the "coming storm" bit, but hey, one day at time, and one bra size at a time, right?

>>6192455
>>There's a nice cafe just outside the gates, though you'll need to wash up first.

>>6192455
I thought fate-weaving was closer to fancy wording combined with magical cool sword techniques not..whatever the hell this was, good thing we are Siegfried's future sister-in-law.

>>The cafeteria always has a nice spread for breakfast. Most importantly, it's free for students.
Gimme that free food

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>>6192620
>Holy edgekino, it is a good thing we closed our eyes. I didn't think Siegfried was being literal when he said the sight would stain our soul.
Valeria closing her eyes and covering her ears influenced the actions Siegfried took here. There were a number of things that he was a bit loose lipped with here that he would have kept quiet about had you chosen to watch. He also wouldn't have demonstrated his own rare masteries of the Higher Mysteries while you were watching, and would have instead just stuck to fancy sword techniques. After all, just as women can become warriors and learn to use leben to fuel sword techniques (albeit less efficiently than men can use badra), men can learn sorcery as well. Badra is just much less efficient for it.
>>6192658
>Hahahawhathtefuck.
He used a very advanced refraction technique to pull them into a fold he created in the texture of the world that he held complete dominion over. This technique is documented in the Collegia Arcana as Kriemhild's Wrinkle, a spell of the ninth order of complexity that requires both large amounts of leben to fuel as well as extremely precise control.

Kriemhild was a handsome red haired woman whom records are rather sparse on from before fifteen years ago. She graduated from the Gold Tower of the Collegia Arcana ten years ago and proceeded to fall off the face of the Earth. Many people believe that she was a bastard daughter of the fon Dovastad family due to her resemblance to their heir Siegfried.

Actually, she was just Siegfried in a dress. He thought it was unfair that the Collegia Arcana was a women's school while the Collegia Espada recently became mixed gender, so he dressed up as a woman and made plans to attend until he was found out and expelled.

Only his roommate ever found out. They were lovers for the duration of their studies, though she since left the Middle Kingdom and returned to her homeland.
>>6192669
>Guess he didn’t need help after all. Pretty badass.
Neither he nor Mikhail would have needed backup, though Mikhail would have taken a few blows on his ironsilks. For all that Siegfried dabbed on them, they actually are pretty fearsome warriors.
>>6192804
This was not their family sword art, but Siegfried's own original spell. You would have seen a reality hole for a bit, not too much different than Mikhail's own CLOTHES BLADE from earlier, though on a larger scale. Though as said above, he would have done things differently if you watched. Probably a bit more directly bloody.
>>6192833
>I thought fate-weaving was closer to fancy wording combined with magical cool sword techniques not..whatever the hell this was, good thing we are Siegfried's future sister-in-law.
The Ruby Lemniscate is an esoteric sword art that borders on sorcery. This, however, was just straight up actual sorcery. Siegfried can make for an exceptionally handsome woman when he pleases to.

>>6192898
>a fold he created in the texture of the world that he held complete dominion over.
motherfucker had a domain expansion

>>6192898
Well if "Kriemhild" could achieve such mastery with such small moobs, then surely our tiny tits will suffice! Odd that the contradiction between "her" spell's large leben consumption, and her small 'stature' hasn't given us a break from harassment. You'd think she'd be held up as an example to us, affect the culture. Maybe she's just seen as an historical oddity.

>They are actually pretty fearsome warriors

Didn't stop them from pissing themselves at the sight of our little street performance. Imagine being a fearsome lifelong reaver and losing your nerve to a drama student's lightshow.

>>6192455
>The cafeteria always has a nice spread for breakfast. Most importantly, it's free for students.

This is not the first quest whose magic system involves breast size... But you write damn well, QM. Welcome back? And if you are not that QM, then welcome regardless. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this, good stuff!

>>6192455
>The cafeteria always has a nice spread for breakfast. Most importantly, it's free for students.

>>6192898
>Kriemhild was a handsome red haired woman whom records are rather sparse on from before fifteen years ago. She graduated from the Gold Tower of the Collegia Arcana ten years ago and proceeded to fall off the face of the Earth. Many people believe that she was a bastard daughter of the fon Dovastad family due to her resemblance to their heir Siegfried.
>Actually, she was just Siegfried in a dress.

Thank you for the almost-spit-take QM, and thanks for the lore tidbits!

I will echo >>6192932 in that him achieving that level of mastery is impressive, though I'm guessing he has ridiculous bradra reserves which must(ve helped with the bad conversion ratio. Still, we may need to ask him for further pointers on mana control if we ever figure out the Kriemhild reveal! We've gotten good at being a miser on the smaller strucutres of cantrips, but he would save us a lot of headaches and groundwork on cutting costs down majorly on higher tier/order spells through control alone!

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The allure of the cafeteria breakfast is a powerful one when its only price is arriving between the hours of six and nine. You can hardly refuse, especially after the night you just had.

Before you head down, you wash up and change your clothes. The hot water of a shower feels nice upon your skin, like the warm and gentle summer rains that fall in the Eversummer back home in Isrik. Lavender soaps scrub away the grim and smoke of the meathouse, and leave you feeling thoroughly cleansed and refreshed. You exchange your white cloak for black, and your high-collared black dress for a white one that shows off your clavicle. A blue sash wraps around your waist, and you pin the cloak closed with a silver brooch of the Ivanovan Snowflake.

Pittering down the stairs, you mercifully avoid any run-ins with that bitch or her companions. They prefer to eat out at some Plamyan eatery than join the other students for breakfast. That bitch is not Plamyan herself, but from a place still further south where the language adds pops and clicks of the tongue to the syllables used in the Middle Kingdom.

Apparently the cuisine of Port Kaplan - the finest in all the Middle Kingdom - doesn't use enough spices or butter for her liking.

You know the Reaper Pepper comes from far to the south. You have to wonder if she might have accidentally burnt out her tastebuds on it...

Down in the dining hall, breakfast foods have been spread out across a central table, with your fellow students coming and going to grab themselves a bite to eat. Cornettos sit alongside boiled eggs and cheeses, while sweet and soft maritozzi lay amongst a host of hard biscotti. Platters of rustico stuffed with spinach, ricotta, and eggs sit next to slices of frittata and a pot of rich tomato sauce to dress them.

Of course scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and jam are all available as well, alongside bowels of freshly cut melons and cantaloupe. Condiments range from savory garum all the way to some sweet obscenity the Duraks make from tomatoes and an overabundance of sugar. Drinks range from pressed juices to tea, and most importantly the bitter black gold that helps you survive the morning: coffee.

What do you get to eat?
>Get something light
>Get something heavy
>Get something from home
>Something else?

You recognize a few tables full of people here who you could join without causing much of a scene. Most people don't really care that you've got very little going for you, they just sort of pity you and wish you luck. Only that bitch really rejects you out of hand, and finds the need to torment you.

Who do you join?
>The well kept clique of future nobleman's wives.
>The frazzled group of social outcasts.
>The tomboys who went here instead of the Collegia Espada
>The boldly dressed women who know men a bit too well
>The unkempt crowd with their noses in their books
>Someone else?

>>6193239
>Get something light
Light is good.
>The unkempt crowd with their noses in their books
Nerd time.

>>6193239
>Get something light
>The unkempt crowd with their noses in their books

My people call to me.

>>6193239
>>Get something light
>>The unkempt crowd with their noses in their books

>>6193239
>Get something light
>The unkempt crowd with their noses in their books

>>6193239
>>Get something light
>>The unkempt crowd with their noses in their books
What's that? My own experience?

>>6193239
>Get something light
>The unkempt crowd with their noses in their books
We are hardly unkempt, but at least we get to stand out a little among the unwashed bookworms.

>>6193239
>Get something heavy
>The boldly dressed women who know men a bit too well
We're not like other nerds, for one we have regular supply of cock

huh, now that I think about it one of the tomboys could be a guy on a dress, like what Siegfried did when he was Kriemhild so I'm changing my vote >>6193604 from the eating with the nerds to this

>The tomboys who went here instead of the Collegia Espada

Also it would be funny af if Mikhail was doing the same thing like Siegfried did.

>>6193415
>>6193239
Also changing to:
>The tomboys who went here instead of the Collegia Espada

Based on >>6193716's logic, we could find Mikhail since he showed some reality warping stuff when we were at the hotel with him.

>>6193239
>Get something light
>The unkempt crowd with their noses in their books
I for one don't want to meet crossdressers.

File: The nerds.png (3.29 MB, 2240x1280)

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>>6193270
>>6193399
>>6193525
>>6193559
>>6193750
Frankly, you don't need anything more than coffee and some biscotti to start your day.

You take your coffee fresh from the press and without a single thing added to it. Sugar? Cream? What are those? Are they tasty? Frankly they sound like a desecration of the sacred morning brew. Coffee should be bitter and smooth. It doesn't need anything sweet to temper its natural flavors unless you have the immature palette of a spoilt child. Since the Collegia Arcana doesn't accept children into its halls, you find it amazing that they bother leaving such useless things next to the brewing station.

Naturally you take a seat next to a woman who drowned her coffee in sugar and cream. You can't really call it coffee anymore, at this point its a cup of sweet cream that's been lightly flavored with coffee. For a moment, you wonder where all those extra calories go, and then you're reminded of the massive lumps of magic that she and the other women you've joined have straining against their robes.

"Morning gals," you mumble with a voice still thick with sleep.

"Good morning, Valeria" says Amalia, a woman with fiery red hair. She gives you a passing glance before her eyes return to the diffusion text in her hands.

"Mornin' Val," chirps the blueberry-blonde Tiff. Her eyes are glued to her little Bardak Bible, her face shifting through lecherous expression as she flips through the pages. Not many women are brave enough to read pornography in public, nor are many sorceresses subtle enough with condensation to layer a fake cover atop a book. Her heavy breathing, flushed face, and the subtle scent filling the air makes you want to dump a pitcher of cold water on her.

"I knew it!" the third woman, Daphodil, nearly causes a scene when she slams her refraction text onto the table. She gives you an accusatory glance, her voice dropping as she says, "You've been sneaking off to the Collegia Espada lately, and now you come back with your vibrations buzzing of a man! Did you betray our sacred compact?!"

You take a seat and give Daphne a confused look. Through a sip of your coffee, you ask, "What sacred compact?"

"Staying a virgin until 30," all three of them say at once.

You point an amused finger at Tiff. "As if Miss Female Pervert here didn't already give hers away to a rubber toy."

"Doesn't count!" Tiff says, snapping her porn closed to punctuate her words. She puffs up with no small amount of unwarranted pride, her entirely unfair chest bouncing happily beneath her robes. Did she even wear a bra today? "I'm a virgin through and through. I'll have you know that I've never even seen a real penis in my life!"

"Just the ones scribbled in your books," Amalia says with a sigh. "Why must you read those in public, Tiff?"

>>6193929
"Because I gotta plan for the big day," Tiff launches into her usual excuse, going into far more detail than necessary. "I mean, I gotta figure out what I like, you know? Plan out how I'm gonna lose it. Binding an Orc and playing captured lady knight would be nice, but that cliche is played out isn't it? I'm thinking of propagating a pit of tentacles, and then cutting the circulation of my senses from my neck down to let it all build up for one big-"

"Yeah, yeah, we've heard that a dozen times," Daphne cuts Tiff off before she can go into too much detail. "You'll do whatever's popular at the Comics Market that year, that's not the point. Val! Details, spill them!"

You crunch your biscotti and chew it very slowly, staring at Daphne's growing impatience. By the time it reaches half the size of her udders, you ask, "Can we not talk about my love life?"

"Unacceptable!" Daphne says. "Dodging the question means that you've betrayed us. I'll have the truth from you, you... boyfriend-haver!"

"I wanna know if you sucked his dick," Tiff says, earning a gentle bonk from the spine of Amalia's book.

"And I want to ensure that some ruffian isn't taking advantage of a dear friend," Amalia says. "You may not know this, but men are wolves. They're all ravenous creatures who will stop at nothing from taking advantage of a woman's innocence. If you give them an inch, they'll take a mile. Once they've talked you out of your clothes and onto their bed, they don't give a whit about your feelings."

The cheerful expressions on Tiff and Daphne's face drops off. Tiff gives her a sympathetic look and asks, "Amalia... have you had such an experience?"

"If you can't join us on our journey to thirty years of virginity, that's fine," Daphne says, shooting her a reassuring look. "We won't hold it against you. In fact, we'll hold it against the guy. Violently, if you'd like us to."

Amalia pinches her nose and sighs, "No, that's not what I-"

You clap her on the shoulder and flash Amalia an angelic smile. "We're here for you, Amalia. Even if you just want to keep quiet about it, we'll always be by your side."

"Look, my brother goes through women like gym towels," Amalia says, batting your arm away. "It's one of the reason why I tend to stay away from men. Not because of anything like Tiff's weird fantasies. Most of them just want a warm body to stick their dick in, and don't understand a woman's feelings about getting stuck, is all."

She looks at you with narrowed eyes. "Now this man of yours isn't just using you, is he?"

How do you respond?
>No, he's not like that.
>Boy, I WISH he would just use me...
>Explain in detail how hard it was to get him to understand what you wanted.
>Pretend to be naive and talk about going to this weird hotel...
>Right, none of them have ever been to Carlotta's Ladies' Nights.
>Something else.

>>6193931
>Explain in detail how hard it was to get him to understand what you wanted.
Better to do that before these women get the wrong picture about us or the husbando

>Not many women are brave enough to read pornography in public,
That does remind me a lot of highschool..though my porn phone looking friend wasn't a nerd, he was stoner instead.

>>6193931
>>Boy, I WISH he would just use me...

>>6193931
>Explain in detail how hard it was to get him to understand what you wanted.
>Boy, I WISH he would just use me...

>>6193931
>>Explain in detail how hard it was to get him to understand what you wanted.
>>Boy, I WISH he would just use me...

>>6193931
>Explain in detail how hard it was to get him to understand what you wanted.
>Boy, I WISH he would just use me...

>>6193931
>>Boy, I WISH he would just use me...
>>Explain in detail how hard it was to get him to understand what you wanted.

>>6193931
>>No, he's not like that.

I don't get impression Val actually wants to get used, even if the idea might excite her...

File: Tiff.png (2.99 MB, 1280x2240)

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>>6194006
>>6194027
>>6194033
>>6194261
"Boy, I wish he would just use me..." You time your words right as Amalia takes a sip of the horrifically sweet cream that she calls coffee. The abomination of a drink goes right down the wrong pipe, making her choke at sputter at your nonchalance. "Seriously, there I was, lying naked on the bed, telling him he didn't have to hold back, that he could do anything he wanted, and do you know what he does? No, seriously, do you know what that delightful lunkhead does?"

Amalia frowns with narrowed eyes and offers, "Devours you whole like a brutish wolf."

When you shake your head, Daphne takes the opportunity to ask, "Made your thirty year promise null and void?"

"Oh, I see how it is," Tiff says when you shake your head again. There's a sparkle in her eyes as she rambles on, "He strapped you to the bed with a set of soft leather cuffs, and then when you couldn't move he pulled out a caligraphy brush and a pot filled with warm body oil. Except the body oil was also laced with Aphros Root extract, so when he tickled at all your most delicate places with the brush, they became enflamed with such a passionate desire that you were left squirming and begging for him to let you finish. But he didn't, did he? Did he put a blindfold over your eyes, or-?"

"No," you say. Your ears have turned pink and your cheeks have reddened, as that actually sounds like a really pleasant evening. Regardless. "He threw me into the air and used one of his fancy sword techniques to cover me in a set of fuzzy pajamas. Because he thought I looked cold."

"By the gods, that's so precious," Tiff squeals in delight, happily clapping her hands.

"Congratulations on finding a unicorn," says the resident misandrist. You have a feeling that Amalia would sound cold towards him no matter what you said.

"So nothing happened?" Daphne asks, her brow furrowed in confusion. Sniffing the air, she frowns and says, "That can't have been the end of it. My sister went to the Collegia Espada, I know the vibe of a woman who's filled up on badra - and you feel like you've maxed out. Spill the beans, Val, what happened after the pajama thing?"

You give Amalia a mysterious smile. "You know, they say a woman's more beautiful when she has a few secrets~"

That being said, you're not above giving your three besties a hint or two. Taking the longest piece of biscotti on your plate, you gently dip it into your coffee to soften it up a bit. Your ears pinken at the next step, where you slowly and suggestively take the entire thing into your mouth. Not entirely unlike what you did the other day with another long, warm treat... though that one had a savory cream filling that the biscotti lack.

Tiff is the first one to catch your meaning, her face morphing into a lecherous grin. "Nice. Was it big and burly, or small and cute?"

>>6194591
You stare at her as you slowly chew on your biscotti, waiting for the other two to catch up to where she's gotten. Amalia looks nonplussed while Daphne looks like she's processing what Tiff just said. Neither of them get there before you wash the biscotti down with your coffee and say, "I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about, Tiff."

"Oh. Ohhhhhhhhh!" Comprehension dawns on Daphne's face when she finally catches up. She gives you and Tiff a look and says, "Well, if he's got some fancy pajama slash, it'd have to be pretty big, right? Sis told me from her experience at the Collegia Espada, that the strongest guys always have the biggest-"

"Gross," Amalia cuts Daphne off. "We shouldn't talk about such things in public. It's uncouth."

"But guys talk about boobs all the time when they have boy-talk," Tiff grumbles. "It's only fair that if we have some girl talk, that we talk about-"

"Anyways, classes are out this week," Amalia cuts Tiff off before she can say the "D" word. "Do any of you have plans? Preferably ones that don't involve doing strange things with your new boyfriend, Val."

What do you want to do this week?
>Going over on your apprentice hours, make those marks!
>Get the gals to take a Copper Quest from the Guild. Adventure!
>The Comics Market is having their summer event. You suppose you can suffer through it for Tiff.
>Plotting revenge on that bitch, and executing!
>Pursuing your studies in Refraction
>Pursuing your studies in Modulation
>Pursuing your studies in Condensation
>Pursuing your studies in Purification
>Something else?

>>6194591
>Get the gals to take a Copper Quest from the Guild. Adventure!
I like our misandrist, the normie nerd and our pervert virgin frens, adventure!

>>6194592
>Get the gals to take a Copper Quest from the Guild. Adventure!

>>6194591
Not to destroy the immersion, QM, but how do you, a presumably-straight man, know what dick is supposed to taste like?

>>6194592
>>Get the gals to take a Copper Quest from the Guild. Adventure!

>>6194592
>>The Comics Market is having their summer event. You suppose you can suffer through it for Tiff.

>>6194592
>Plotting revenge on that bitch, and executing!

>>6194592
>Get the gals to take a Copper Quest from the Guild. Adventure!
Where's the lewd scene qm

>>6194592
>>Get the gals to take a Copper Quest from the Guild. Adventure!
although maybe we should hit the books at some time as well and get them sick skills.

>>6194592
>>Get the gals to take a Copper Quest from the Guild. Adventure!

>>6194626
That's the neat part! I don't.
>>6195028
Coming eventually.
>>6195089
Yeah. Also note, badra transfer is generally going to happen passively each week, you'll get to choose what to do with it at the end of the week.

Sorry for going incommunicado. Will not be able to update tonight or tomorrow, but once the weekend comes we'll be good!

>>6195870
No worries QM! Thank you for keeping us updated.

>>6195870
QM?

Booba quest has died, the flats have won henceforth.

Rolled 19, 96, 18, 57, 38 = 228 (5d100)

>>6197939
I'm alive again. Fuck the flu. First I get stupidly busy before the long weekend, then I get my long weekend stolen by sickness.
>>6198692
No.

Anyways rolling some hundos for quest content. No you will not be told which option corresponds to which die (but some of them will be fairly obvious).

File: Receptionist.png (3.4 MB, 1280x2240)

3.4 MB PNG

>>6194599
>>6194606
>>6194627
>>6195028
>>6195089
>>6195137
"I was thinking of taking a copper rank quest," you tell Amalia. Your eyes light up with happy sparkles, as getting enough of those under your belt is the best way a flatty like you can rank up your Adventuring License from provisional to a proper Copper Rank. "We could involve Mikhail-"

Daphne slams her hand on the table, looking at you in shock. "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Mikhail. As in Mikhail fon Dovastad? As in the Ultra Rank S-Class Super Hotty who tops the student ranks at the Collegia Espada? He's your boy toy?"

"Not possible," Tiff mumbles, back to reading her porn. "That man's a turbo virgin who only thinks about swords. I don't think he even knows what boobs are."

You smirk, puffing out your insubstantial chest with pride. "Well he does now!"

Tiff stares at you for a long moment, taking a sip of her juice that lasts far too long. "I rest my case."

A strange choking noise comes out of your mouth as words fail you. You did not expect Tiff of all people to go straight for the kill shot there, not when she herself ascribes to the ideals that chests of all sizes make the world more beautiful. Amalia rests a gentle hand on your shoulder and reassures you, "I'm sure he liked what he saw, Val. Men can't control themselves around women they care for. Which is why it's extra important that you be carefu-"

"Anyways," you snap, giving both Amalia and Tiff the stink eye. You know they both mean well, but sometimes their personalities can... "Anyways, we don't need a warrior to join us for most Copper Rank quests. A coven of sorceresses can do just fine without a meat shield, especially when..."

Your voice trails off as you give meaningful looks at all of their chests, and how their robes are full to bursting. They might be nerds and outcasts, but besides that bitch they're three of the most "gifted" sorceresses across the Nine Towers.

"Right," Amalia nods. "Well, I suppose an adventurer might be a worthwhile endeavor."

Tiff nods enthusiastically. "I wanna see if goblins are as gifted in real life as they are in my novellas..."

All three of you give Tiff an odd look before Daphne says, "Let's just avoid anything to do with Orcs or Goblins. Tiff might betray the pact."

"What pact?" you and Tiff ask simultaneously.

====

>>6199902
The Adventurer's Guild sits across from the town's main gate, overlooking the tents of the market through a dozen windows on its rounded face. At one point, the building had been the Bank of the Goldsmiths' Guild. A little more than a century ago, the Sage Flammen cracked the propagation of Gold and crashed every currency in the known world. The Adventurer's Guild rose to replace them with the Venture Mark, a currency backed by sword, spell, and skill in place of metals that sorcery could propagate.

A Copper Ranked Quest always pays a thousand marks to each adventurer.

The other quest ranks can be negotiated by the requestor, but the pay of a Copper Ranked Quest is set in stone. The same daily pay received by the rank and file soldiers that make up the permanent members of a city's watch or lord's guard. Less profitable quests even get sponsored by the local lords, seen as an important stimulus to the local economy or an economical way to keep vermin like goblins and giant rats in check.

By tying the mark to adventuring services, the currency was grounded to an approximate value that could fluctuate around the availability of adventurers who found such quests worthwhile, and allowed for changes to the money supply. When a Copper Quest wasn't worth a thousand marks, the guild would print the marks to make up the difference. If a Copper Quest was in high demand due to how cheap guild labor was, guild fees would be used to take currency out of the supply.

It was hardly a perfect system.

Their push and pull of the currency did ensure that a family of six has been able to survive in relative comfort on a daily wage of 1000 marks for the past hundred years. It's also more than what your apprentice hours would make, but those labors are trivialities for students who do not need to worry about room and board. The practice is the real value there, keeping yourself sharp and mastering the basics.

The first floor of the guildhall is a tavern where all the toughs of the guild meet to drink away their pay and keep a weather eye out for a quest. A receptionist in a red vest greets you like an old friend. Because Vera is a friend... even if she blocks you from taking the good quests.

"I see you didn't come alone today, Valeria," she says, eyeing your friends. They all present their provisional licenses alongside yours. "Well, these seem to be in order. Let me check what quests are available."

There are five that catch your eye...
>There are rats in the sewers. Giant ones. Go slay them.
>A goblin camp was spotted near town and needs to be cleared out.
>A painter is looking for models of adventurer women for an anatomy study.
>A local merchant has requested the retrieval of 50lbs of honey from the dire bees.
>A blacksmith wants you to retrieve some magicite from nearby vein.

>>6199855
Oof, get better soon qm and no worries, health comes first and yeah fuck the flu

>>6199905
>A goblin camp was spotted near town and needs to be cleared out.
I feel like Tiff will do great against goblins (and if that fails she works as living bait).

>>6199905
>>There are rats in the sewers. Giant ones. Go slay them.

>>6199855
Hope you feel better, QM. Take the time you need to recover.

>>6199905
>There are rats in the sewers. Giant ones. Go slay them.
Rats.

>>6199905
>>A painter is looking for models of adventurer women for an anatomy study.

>>6199905
>>A local merchant has requested the retrieval of 50lbs of honey from the dire bees.
I'll be honest, I just want to see a dire bee.

>>6199855
Glad to hear of your recovery, OP. Stay well.

>A local merchant has requested the retrieval of 50lbs of honey from the dire bees.
Let's go with the bees.
Hopefully among our group we can figure out how to distract or neutralize the bees while we collect the honey.

>>6199905
>A painter is looking for models of adventurer women for an anatomy study.

Giving notice that I was unexpectedly super busy today, will not be able to post tonight.

it's all good qm

>>6199905
>A painter is looking for models of adventurer women for an anatomy study.

>>6199905
>A painter is looking for models of adventurer women for an anatomy study.

>>6200176
>>6200300
>>6200924
>>6201274
Everyone wants the anatomy study rather than the bees sadge. Well, that'll happen tomorrow, tonight also was... more expectedly super busy.

>>6201337
Null sweat OP

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198 KB JPG

The four of you stare at the flier that reads:

>Copper Rank Quest
>Models needed for art studies
>Must be registered adventurers
>Located at 1601 Iron Road

"This is super suspicious, right?" Tiff asks as she looks it over with squinted eyes. "No way that this is legit. Someone sketch is gonna try to kidnap us."

"Guild Quests go through a stringent review process," Amalia answers, though even she has suspicion in her voice. "There's no way that they let something like that through."

"I've been hearing rumors that someone or some thing has been kidnapping beautiful women in that part of town..." Daphne trails off. Her eyes narrow. "We're all beautiful women here, what if they're after us?"

"Even I can shoot icicles," you tell her. "Worst case we can file a lawsuit if the client isn't legitimate."

Tiff snorts, "Yeah, if we don't end up in the man's sex dungeon."

Amalia turns red, her ears trembling as she says, "Indeed. Such a fate would be... we should take this mission to investigate, to ensure those filthy men don't do anything untoward to less savvy sorceresses than we!"

You pinch your nose.

Amalia's opinion on men is a little...

[b]Anyways, how do you approach this?[/b]
>It's just an odd quest. Just take the job.
>Just go to the location wary for betrayal.
>Scout the place ahead of time.
>Grab a more normal quest, like the honey gathering

>>6201785
>>It's just an odd quest. Just take the job.

>>6201785
>>Scout the place ahead of time.

>>6201785
>It's just an odd quest. Just take the job.

>>6201785
>It's just an odd quest. Just take the job.
If it's a quest it should be semi-legit

>>6201785
>>It's just an odd quest. Just take the job.
What are we? A coward?

>>6201785
>>Scout the place ahead of time.
I feel that we should not take the path of the total idiot.

>>6201785
>It's just an odd quest. Just take the job.

File: Spoiler Image (3.81 MB, 1280x2240)

3.81 MB PNG

>>6201793
>>6202203
>>6202225
>>6202750
>>6203061
The trip down to the artist's studio takes you back to the warehouse district near the southern gate and past the buildings used by the meat packer's guild to process the monthly harvest of sheep, swine, and cattle. Surprisingly you don't feel shaken despite getting mugged just around the bend yesterday. The fear and adrenaline from last night seems a distant memory, overwhelmed by the warm feelings of girl talk this morning. That and the specter of Siegfried's protection.

Your darling Mikhail is a mighty swordsman who stands at the pinnacle of the Collegia Espada, undefeated in the dueling ring by his fellow students since his second year. A man who excitedly showed you the skull of the dragon he slew as part of his Master of Swordsmanship thesis. A dragon he slew without taking a single injury.

His older brother Siegfried is a legend whose name has already been carved into history.

Frankly, you have nothing to worry about. Even if those rumors about beautiful, buxom women disappearing in the slums are true, the moment you send up a flare one or both of them will come running. Mikhail eager to save his damsel. Siegfried willing to put the fear of the gods into anyone who would harm his little brother's beloved. The whole operation will then be summarily dismantled by an unstoppable force, so maybe it would even be desirable to get caught up in these perilous rumors.

The address certainly goes deep enough into the slums that the quest could be part of it. Warehouses old and abandoned, nestled up against one another in a shadow of the southern wall that falls as far away from a guard's tower as one could possibly be within the city. Storage space repurposed into the cheapest housing in the city, poorly insulated against even the Middle Kingdom's mild summers and winters.

Slumlords run the nicer ones, more kempt places that almost look like proper apartments where the windows are shuttered instead of nailed shut. Most however board up the windows and holes in the walls with wooden pegs and the cheapest, thinnest lumber they could find.

Daphne's face is marred with a frown. She has a kind heart, and reminders that not everyone can afford to live as well as she does tend to drive her to fits of charity. You have a feeling that she'll be volunteering at the church's soup kitchens for a while, until she feels like she's made up for the sin of being wealthy. Maybe she'll even stick with it, though she tends to burn herself out.

Tiff seems less bothered by it all, which makes sense. She came from a place not unlike these hovels, and had the brains and the boobs to get herself out of there with a scholarship to the Collegia Magica. The money she doesn't spend on porn goes back to her family. With all the side hustles that she has going on selling her sorcery and writing her own lewd novellas, she got them out too.

Amalia, though...

>>6203277
She's offended by the slum's existence. She tries her best to keep her disdain off her face, as she knows on some level that no one chooses to live in such squalor, but she can't help but give voice to her feelings. Mercifully she's quiet about it, and even more mercifully the streets are almost suspiciously empty as you close in on the artist's residence. "How can anyone live like this?"

"By getting cozy with the mice," Tiff says with a twinkle in her eye. "That's better than sucking up to the slumlords. Little fellas can be cute, as long as you clean up after them. A lot better than getting on your knees for an unwashed hooligan like some gals would do for a discount, I'll tell you what."

"Eugh..." Amalia shudders in disgust. "Men are the worst."

"Nah, the women were way worse," Tiff says with a shake of her head. "They're the ones who run the brothels and scout for 'talent.' By which I mean, get a lady barely old enough to sign for a loan caught up in a debt trap that they'll never pay off unless they become the gal in charge, get help from their families, or charm someone wealthy enough to marry them or at least buy out their contract."

"That's awful..." Daphne mutters, her eyes drooping down as she contemplates what she just heard.

"Church is over there if you want to help out," you say, pointing towards a cleaner looking warehouse marked with a nine pointed star made of tin. "I bet a sorceress of your talents could do a lot of good hear."

That tugs Daphne right out of her somber mood, and you can already see the gears turning in her eyes, plotting away whatever her next passion project of charity will be. Hopefully one that can sustain itself should she end up putting it down.

The artist's hovel is a ways down from the church, and a few alleys over. Just out of sight of it, really. It seems no better or worse than any of the other warehouses turned shacks in this part of the slums, perhaps even a bit better put together than most. Tiff's the most comfortable in this part of town - though you have less issue than Daphne and Amalia for sure - and steps up to knock on the door.

A voice thick with a Kamen brogue greets you as the door opens. "G'day ladiiiiiiiiii-"

A number of things happen when a distressingly familiar man opens the door. The man's eyes widen in fear and from the sudden smell you suspect that he soiled another pair of britches. A cold sensation washes over you, one that makes your hair stand on the back of your neck while Tiff, Daphne, and Amalia's faces all twist in disgust. Everything seems a bit darker afterwards, as if the noonday sun just turned into night. You can barely process the question: why isn't he in jail?

"Baela, you dumb bitch, no!" the man shouts at someone behind you. "That man'll murder us if anything happens to the blondie! She's off limits, you hear! Off! Limits!"

>>6203278
"Sorry~! My ears are all gunked up, I couldn't hear a thing you just said," a playful voice calls. You turn around and see a scandalously dressed woman with red skin. She wears a black coat with golden trim, and her bosom strains against a shirt that can barely contain it. Her pants are flared and puffy, and her belt is made of gold chain. Above her red-gold eyes, a pair of horns sprout from her messy mop of dark hair, and in one hand she carries a dreadful red spear. "Don't bother repeating it though. The three cows will make fine additions to the heard, and the blondie..."

A grin with far too many teeth splits the demon's face in two. The blood moon shines behind her. "Such tight control will make her a fine vessel for one of my sisters~"

What do you do?
>Do what Siegfried didn't do last night and skewer the bastard with an Ice Shot.
>You can feel a strange refraction in the air. Attempt to counter it.
>Try to levitate out of the demon's reach.
>Grab your friends, refract a false image of yourself running away with them, and run when the demon has been tricked.
>Shout for Mikhail and cast dancing lights.
>Something else?

>>6203280
>>You can feel a strange refraction in the air. Attempt to counter it.
I fucking called it.

>>6203280
>You can feel a strange refraction in the air. Attempt to counter it.

>>6203280
>Grab your friends, refract a false image of yourself running away with them, and run when the demon has been tricked.

>>6203278
>Do what Siegfried didn't do last night and skewer the bastard with an Ice Shot.

>>6203280
>You can feel a strange refraction in the air. Attempt to counter it.
Subtle should be what we do best, and allow our companions to do the bosom heaving.

>>6203280
>>You can feel a strange refraction in the air. Attempt to counter it.

Rolled 40 (1d100)

>>6203288
>>6203337
>>6203566
>>6203682
Rolling to see how well this goes!

Rolled 8, 32, 45 = 85 (3d100)

And some more rolls to see how the other girls are doing. Alphabetical order.

File: Spoiler Image (3.05 MB, 2240x1280)

3.05 MB PNG

The blood moon hangs vibrant against the starlit shroud of false night. Reflected in the demon's golden eyes, you can feel its power thrum in the stillness of the air, resonating with the lebenous ichor that flows through the demon's veins. Lines of black pulsate across her skin as malevolence, dominance, and debauchery run their course through the demon's flesh. To one as sensitive to the ever refracting waves of magic that ripple across the world as you are, her mere existence reveals her unhallowed name.

[Balor of the Crimson Moon]

"Submit," the playfulness leaves the demon's voice as she flexes her power. The command washes over you like the currents of a river attempt to move a stone. So tight is your control over your leben and your sense of self that even such a torrent of power cannot push you easily. The pebble may be weak, but it still sinks to the bottom and refuses to move once settled. "Remove those useless rags you wear and prostrate yourself before me. For in my herd you shall find a glorious purpose in surrendering all that you are and all that you shall be to the Queen of Dis..."

Against the torrent of her power, you can hardly find your voice. You look to Tiff, Daphne, and Amalia. They should all have power in spades, enough to drive the demon back, yet it is a if the light of the blood moon has weakened them in some way that you were not. Worse still-

"Of course, Mistress!" Amalia's voice is a joyful song as she shrugs out of her dress. Her eyes are empty and far away, lacking spark or will or the shame of taking off her clothes in front of an unwashed man. Her cheeks flush pink when she steps out of her smallclothes, folding them neatly ontop of her dress before dropping to her hands and knees and bowing her head before the demon. "I give you my everything! Body, mind, and soul~!"

"Amalia...!" Daphne's voice lacks the indignance it should have had. She cannot believe what her friend just did, but at the same time she sounds as though she understands it. Understands it, and finds herself tempted to join. "W-What are you doing. We need to-"

"Submit," the demon speaks again. Stepping gently on Amalia's head, she drives the butt of her spear onto her bottom. The sound of searing flesh fills the air alongside a wordless hiss of pain and pleasure from Amalia. "Submit to me and relinquish all your worries. Join your friend upon the ground, and I will tend you gently as prized cattle. This one is already a such an obedient, sweet cow who will only know joy from now on. Doesn't that sound lovely?"

Daphne's face pinkens, thoughts planted by the demon racing through her mind. She drops to her knees as well, letting the demon cut her free of her clothing with the tip of her spear. With a euphoric smile on her face, she mutters, "It does... it really does~!"

"Good girl," the demon turns her baleful eyes to you and Tiff. "And what of you? Won't you join them~?"

>>6203920
Tiff quivers, clutching at her staff. You're honestly surprised she wasn't the first of your friends to fall to her hands and knees, as you're quite sure that her little books are all filled with scenarios just like this one. She breathes heavily, leaning on her staff, doubtlessly putting every fiber of her being into resisting the temptations of the demon's promise. Muttering some mantra under her breath to focus and center herself. If this demon can overpower sorceresses like your friends this easily, then you've no doubt that she's the culprit behind the disappearances in this area.

Though what did she mean by cattle?

And what's this strange refraction in the air that you feel. It's thrums in time with the pulsing of the blood moon, its waves rippling and bending and weaving through the air like the texture of a fine piece of silk. It feels almost like the ambient hum of magic in the air, the badra and leben of the World that might sorceresses and great swordsmen can work into the stuff of legends. Yet for all that it feels like that, you can see the flaws of the pattern, like strings at the edge of a tattered and frayed cloth. You reach out with your pinky finger, to catch it upon your nail...

"The pleasures written of in your books are nothing compared to the joys I can show you," the demon purrs. As with Amalia, she touches the butt of her spear to Daphne's bottom, but instead of a hiss Daphne lets out a moan of pleasure as her skin sizzle with the brand. "Submit to me and I will ensure that every moment of your life is filled with orgas-"

"Shut up, demon! [Soulfire]"

Tiff slams her staff to the ground with enough force that the shockwave nearly trips up the demon. A flash of blinding white light follows, and on its heels comes a wave of black flame that drinks deep of the light. The fires woven of decomposition that eradicates all the evils in the world, the midnight colored flames of purification that leave the land scoured clean of corruption. The most powerful spell in your perverse friend's arsenal. One that has the inquisition barking at her door to recruit her from the tower, in spite of her strange taste in reading material.

The demon's eyes grow wide and wary at the flame that dances in Tiff's hands. Your friend's eyes glow with an emerald light, one that reminds you of the green sun that supposedly shines in the underworld. She stands up straight, and for once there's no creepy smile on her face as she says, "Gods above, that was annoying. If you're gonna put on the domme act, at least get a voice that doesn't squeak!"

"My voice does not squea-" the demon complains, but she lets out a squeak when a tongue of black fire lashes out at her. She glares at the door and shouts, "Bran, you said you put out a copper quest! What the hell is-"

>>6203924
The demon is forced to dodge back from another whorl of black flame. Tiff strides past the naked, blissful bodies of Amalia and Daphne, ignoring how they try to cling to the hem of her dress. Her green eyes narrow. "Your boytoy's gone, demonspawn. Shouldn't you be keeping your focus on me?"

As she passes by, she gives you a glance.

No words need to be said. You know your role in the team. Amalia keeps everyone healed, banishing poison and mending wounds. Daphne wove illusions with refraction to distract the enemies and keep you all safe from harm. Tiff blew shit up. As the weakest, yet the most bookish of the lot, it fell to you to analyze everything and figure a way out of tricky situations.

Which is exactly why you've focused on this strange texture woven of refraction.
>Pull on the thread you've seized with all your might.
>Attempt to gently unravel the weave.
>Attempt to seize control of the weave.
>Attempt to modify the weave.
>Something else?

>>6203927
>>Attempt to seize control of the weave.

>>6203927
>>Attempt to gently unravel the weave.

>>6203927
>Attempt to gently unravel the weave.
Find a loose thread...

>>6203927
>Attempt to gently unravel the weave.
The pervert saved the day, weak demon debauchery is nothing to the likes of her.