Some thirty minutes later, I found myself massaging a newly scraped and lightly bleeding pair of shins.
Most of the intervening time had gone toward recovering enough stamina and mental fortitude to recast the spell. Though, I will admit, the later was the more difficult.
You might think having a half-dressed girl helplessly collapsed against your chest would be kind of hot, but allow me to disabuse you of that notion. At four or five times gravity, any weight at all against your ribcage is far too much. It hurt like a bitch, I could barely breathe, and if I did not have a fear of being crushed to death before, I was certainly beginning to make inroads on it now.
One more for the list.
Lynnria struggled mightily to free herself for quite a while, but all she managed was to slide somewhat to my left, giving me just enough room to finally fill my lungs—for which I was extremely grateful—but doing little to make her any more comfortable. And by the end of it, she really was starting to cramp.
Meanwhile, Mia kept tunelessly humming somewhere in the background, apparently pleased as punch. I refrained from asking.
In any case, we eventually tried again, and this time, Lynnria managed to keep on task long enough to find the trap’s control mechanism. All of the furniture in the room had been mysteriously unaffected by the gravity well, including the various cups and knickknacks scattered about. None of them even so much as wiggled when she prodded them.
The exception was some sort of thing that reminded me of a backgammon board. Lynnria picked up on its magical nature the moment she touched it—proving the helpfulness of her ability in a stroke—and it did not take much fiddling with it to discover that the game piece’s position on the board corresponded with the trap’s gravity setting.
Mostly because of the screaming.
“I’m sorry, Donum,” she said with a wince once I was ‘safely’ on the ground. “I didn’t realize—“
“It’s fine. Just…” I sighed. There was no need to get upset. I mean, I was, but it was not going to help anything. “The next time you see something with variable settings, just… just take it easy.”
She nodded unhappily then began looking for something to bind my knees with. Though, she quickly got distracted once she began struggling to pull her pants back up. Naturally, her tail was not cooperating.
“Blast it,” she muttered before shooting me an accusatory glare. “These things must have shrunk when you dunked me into the ocean. Now, I can’t pull them back over my tail at all!”
I cocked an eyebrow. Uh huh… I’m sure that’s what it is.
“My knees are still bleeding,” I said instead.
“Oh, right.”
Fumbling a bit in her haste, she discarded the tucking idea in favor of just hiking up the leather as far as it would go underneath her tail. Of course, the lower position on her waistline meant loosening her buckles quite a bit to compensate for the swell of her hips and consequently showing an enticing amount of bare curves. And I was not complaining about the nicely cut V of her abdomen drawing the eye down to certain hidden delights either.
“Mmm… what do we think, Master?” Mia cooed into my ear. “She may be lacking up top, but she’s got some pretty great legs, don’t you think?”
The hell, Mia? Whatever it was that had changed with her, she was starting to sound more than a little perverse.
Not that I disagreed. I mean, I am not much of a leg man, so I had not given it much thought. But now that she mentioned it, Lynnria’s legs were nice and long, perfectly proportioned with regard to her torso. I would even go so far as to call them her best feature.
Still, it was strange for Mia to be pointing it out.
Under the pretext of groaning over my injury, I managed to quietly murmur, “I thought you were upset with her.”
“Only because she was having doubts. But with that tail? Ha! She could not have proclaimed herself more your creature had she held up a sign.”
“What?”
“What?” Lynnria replied with a start.
I glanced up guiltily to find her looking at me. But of course, Mia was not quite done.
“Ah~ Master… No more questions for a little while, please. I’m a used whore!”
“Sorry, uh… Lynnria. Mia was… was uh…” I waved a dismissive hand. “You know what? Never mind. It’s… it’s not important.”
She assumed a bit of a lop-sided smile. “Mia sure does seem to talk about a lot of ‘unimportant’ things when she’s in your head. She’s all business when she comes over here. When she’s not swearing, that is. But alright. I won’t pry.”
I nodded, grateful. “My knees?”
“Oh, uh…” She twirled around quickly before her eyes landed on something on the other side of the room. Trotting over to it, she announced, “Looks like there’s a runner over this table. It’s a little fancy for a bandage, but…”
“What? You’re afraid someone’s going to complain?” I joked, glad for the change in subject. “Well, I’m sorry to bleed all over the fancy furniture, but frankly, any rights to objection were officially forfeited the moment we got swallowed into this trap-filled hellhole. It’s the rules. You can check.”
Lynnria chuckled.
Indignant grandstanding aside, there was an awful lot of weird crap going on. Lynnria’s tail, Mia’s odd behavior, and the strangely leading comments she was starting to make were leaving me with an uneasy taste in my mouth. But then… that seemed to be my lot these days. All I could do was shrug and keep plodding forward.
Neither of them were complaining. Or well… Lynnria was, but that was only because I kept refusing to bend her over and… and steadfastly keep her away from me long enough for the lilim not to tear her throat out. I just hoped I could hold out that long.
Watcher’s eye… That tail was going to be dangerous. Especially now that she knew she could tease me with it.
To distract myself, I glanced around the room. Lynnria was right about one thing. The furnishings were extremely nice. Oddly so. This was just a hidden room in the middle of a darkened maze, and thus far, we had found no inhabitants. As far as I could see, there was no real purpose to even have furniture in this room. Or in the mansion. Who would use them?
Maybe it’s just… like a theme or something. My first Dungeon had been endless hallways of dimly lit, smoothed stone. The second had been sort of a… well, I guess you could call it a Halloween-inspired forest clearing. And now the Dungeon had taken the form of a fancy mansion. There was a definite pattern emerging.
The only outlier had been that island.
However, before I could really sink into my thoughts, I heard a sudden gasp, and Lynnria dropped to the floor.
“Oh, wow…” she said, shaking her head to clear it.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded distractedly, but it took her several seconds to find her voice again. “Yes, I’m… I’m fine, but when I went to grab the cloth, I just suddenly—“ She stopped to glance over her shoulder at me. Her cheeks were flushed. “Um… well, I uh… Let’s say that I’m not… pent up. Anymore.”
O…kay.
Wincing, I climbed to my feet so as to hobble over to her. On first examination, she looked to have collapsed next to an end table with a runner and a bunch of knickknacks and baubles over top of it. But now that I was closer, it was clearly a steamer trunk.
Then the pieces clicked together. “Ah hah… I get it.”
“Get it?” Lynnria looked up at me. “Donum, I wasn’t exactly being vague.”
“What? No, I meant… well, like I was saying before, after you used your skill, you should not have been ‘pent up’ at all. But I think I’ve figured out why. Or some of it.”
Careful to avoid brushing against my injured knees, I began removing the decor from atop the trunk. Now that the trap was disarmed, they came away quite easily, and I had to pause for half a beat once I realized it. However, the unexpected was around every corner, so I quickly returned to my explanation.
“Remember when you cast it? What you asked for?”
“I wanted to find some treasure,” she supplied easily, though from her expression, she was not quite following. “But what’s that got to do with… my reaction just now?”
“That’s a side-effect,” I explained, relieved to at least have something I could account for. “What’s important is to note that your charm had not had the opportunity to complete itself, and thus, your luck build-up had not discharged.”
With that, I pulled the runner away with a flourish, revealing the chest.
“And you seem to have just gotten lucky.”
Seleroan
Hey there, gentle reader.
Enjoying the content? Well, why not drop by my Patreon? It helps me keep this show running, and allows me to afford great things like editors, cover artists, and food!
Each chapter is now being personalized with some... passable chapter-inspired AI generated art. I try. But it gives things a bit of color. And you can read ahead!
Come on down! We'd love to see you.
Some thirty minutes later, I found myself massaging a newly scraped and lightly bleeding pair of shins.
Most of the intervening time had gone toward recovering enough stamina and mental fortitude to recast the spell. Though, I will admit, the later was the more difficult.
You might think having a half-dressed girl helplessly collapsed against your chest would be kind of hot, but allow me to disabuse you of that notion. At four or five times gravity, any weight at all against your ribcage is far too much. It hurt like a bitch, I could barely breathe, and if I did not have a fear of being crushed to death before, I was certainly beginning to make inroads on it now.
One more for the list.
Lynnria struggled mightily to free herself for quite a while, but all she managed was to slide somewhat to my left, giving me just enough room to finally fill my lungs—for which I was extremely grateful—but doing little to make her any more comfortable. And by the end of it, she really was starting to cramp.
Meanwhile, Mia kept tunelessly humming somewhere in the background, apparently pleased as punch. I refrained from asking.
In any case, we eventually tried again, and this time, Lynnria managed to keep on task long enough to find the trap’s control mechanism. All of the furniture in the room had been mysteriously unaffected by the gravity well, including the various cups and knickknacks scattered about. None of them even so much as wiggled when she prodded them.
The exception was some sort of thing that reminded me of a backgammon board. Lynnria picked up on its magical nature the moment she touched it—proving the helpfulness of her ability in a stroke—and it did not take much fiddling with it to discover that the game piece’s position on the board corresponded with the trap’s gravity setting.
Mostly because of the screaming.
“I’m sorry, Donum,” she said with a wince once I was ‘safely’ on the ground. “I didn’t realize—“
“It’s fine. Just…” I sighed. There was no need to get upset. I mean, I was, but it was not going to help anything. “The next time you see something with variable settings, just… just take it easy.”
She nodded unhappily then began looking for something to bind my knees with. Though, she quickly got distracted once she began struggling to pull her pants back up. Naturally, her tail was not cooperating.
“Blast it,” she muttered before shooting me an accusatory glare. “These things must have shrunk when you dunked me into the ocean. Now, I can’t pull them back over my tail at all!”
I cocked an eyebrow. Uh huh… I’m sure that’s what it is.
“My knees are still bleeding,” I said instead.
“Oh, right.”
Fumbling a bit in her haste, she discarded the tucking idea in favor of just hiking up the leather as far as it would go underneath her tail. Of course, the lower position on her waistline meant loosening her buckles quite a bit to compensate for the swell of her hips and consequently showing an enticing amount of bare curves. And I was not complaining about the nicely cut V of her abdomen drawing the eye down to certain hidden delights either.
“Mmm… what do we think, Master?” Mia cooed into my ear. “She may be lacking up top, but she’s got some pretty great legs, don’t you think?”
The hell, Mia? Whatever it was that had changed with her, she was starting to sound more than a little perverse.
Not that I disagreed. I mean, I am not much of a leg man, so I had not given it much thought. But now that she mentioned it, Lynnria’s legs were nice and long, perfectly proportioned with regard to her torso. I would even go so far as to call them her best feature.
Still, it was strange for Mia to be pointing it out.
Under the pretext of groaning over my injury, I managed to quietly murmur, “I thought you were upset with her.”
“Only because she was having doubts. But with that tail? Ha! She could not have proclaimed herself more your creature had she held up a sign.”
“What?”
“What?” Lynnria replied with a start.
I glanced up guiltily to find her looking at me. But of course, Mia was not quite done.
“Ah~ Master… No more questions for a little while, please. I’m a used whore!”
“Sorry, uh… Lynnria. Mia was… was uh…” I waved a dismissive hand. “You know what? Never mind. It’s… it’s not important.”
She assumed a bit of a lop-sided smile. “Mia sure does seem to talk about a lot of ‘unimportant’ things when she’s in your head. She’s all business when she comes over here. When she’s not swearing, that is. But alright. I won’t pry.”
I nodded, grateful. “My knees?”
“Oh, uh…” She twirled around quickly before her eyes landed on something on the other side of the room. Trotting over to it, she announced, “Looks like there’s a runner over this table. It’s a little fancy for a bandage, but…”
“What? You’re afraid someone’s going to complain?” I joked, glad for the change in subject. “Well, I’m sorry to bleed all over the fancy furniture, but frankly, any rights to objection were officially forfeited the moment we got swallowed into this trap-filled hellhole. It’s the rules. You can check.”
Lynnria chuckled.
Indignant grandstanding aside, there was an awful lot of weird crap going on. Lynnria’s tail, Mia’s odd behavior, and the strangely leading comments she was starting to make were leaving me with an uneasy taste in my mouth. But then… that seemed to be my lot these days. All I could do was shrug and keep plodding forward.
Neither of them were complaining. Or well… Lynnria was, but that was only because I kept refusing to bend her over and… and steadfastly keep her away from me long enough for the lilim not to tear her throat out. I just hoped I could hold out that long.
Watcher’s eye… That tail was going to be dangerous. Especially now that she knew she could tease me with it.
To distract myself, I glanced around the room. Lynnria was right about one thing. The furnishings were extremely nice. Oddly so. This was just a hidden room in the middle of a darkened maze, and thus far, we had found no inhabitants. As far as I could see, there was no real purpose to even have furniture in this room. Or in the mansion. Who would use them?
Maybe it’s just… like a theme or something. My first Dungeon had been endless hallways of dimly lit, smoothed stone. The second had been sort of a… well, I guess you could call it a Halloween-inspired forest clearing. And now the Dungeon had taken the form of a fancy mansion. There was a definite pattern emerging.
The only outlier had been that island.
However, before I could really sink into my thoughts, I heard a sudden gasp, and Lynnria dropped to the floor.
“Oh, wow…” she said, shaking her head to clear it.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded distractedly, but it took her several seconds to find her voice again. “Yes, I’m… I’m fine, but when I went to grab the cloth, I just suddenly—“ She stopped to glance over her shoulder at me. Her cheeks were flushed. “Um… well, I uh… Let’s say that I’m not… pent up. Anymore.”
O…kay.
Wincing, I climbed to my feet so as to hobble over to her. On first examination, she looked to have collapsed next to an end table with a runner and a bunch of knickknacks and baubles over top of it. But now that I was closer, it was clearly a steamer trunk.
Then the pieces clicked together. “Ah hah… I get it.”
“Get it?” Lynnria looked up at me. “Donum, I wasn’t exactly being vague.”
“What? No, I meant… well, like I was saying before, after you used your skill, you should not have been ‘pent up’ at all. But I think I’ve figured out why. Or some of it.”
Careful to avoid brushing against my injured knees, I began removing the decor from atop the trunk. Now that the trap was disarmed, they came away quite easily, and I had to pause for half a beat once I realized it. However, the unexpected was around every corner, so I quickly returned to my explanation.
“Remember when you cast it? What you asked for?”
“I wanted to find some treasure,” she supplied easily, though from her expression, she was not quite following. “But what’s that got to do with… my reaction just now?”
“That’s a side-effect,” I explained, relieved to at least have something I could account for. “What’s important is to note that your charm had not had the opportunity to complete itself, and thus, your luck build-up had not discharged.”
With that, I pulled the runner away with a flourish, revealing the chest.
“And you seem to have just gotten lucky.”
Seleroan
Hey there, gentle reader.
Enjoying the content? Well, why not drop by my Patreon? It helps me keep this show running, and allows me to afford great things like editors, cover artists, and food!
Each chapter is now being personalized with some... passable chapter-inspired AI generated art. I try. But it gives things a bit of color. And you can read ahead!
Come on down! We'd love to see you.
