The three of us continued on through the dungeon, speeding our way past the weak monsters while I looked forward to facing off against something strong or unusual. It had been quite a long time since I had been challenged, and I didn't count that hydra as one considering the state I was in.
Alicia's voice reverberated in my head while the monsters' stat pages appeared in the corner of my vision. Ever since Alicia discovered she could use [Scan], she had started practising its use, and as soon as she could started to give me combat advice however she could.
At first it took quite some time for her to find the section to display the monster's status. Part of it was my fault, as I just flew past all the mobs and only engaged the bosses because I had to. Even then I generally just took them out with a simple shot of magic.
For the first six floors, that was basically all I did. But when I got distracted admiring the shape and colour of a red leaf that was falling from above, a lone orc started charging at me in the autumn forest themed boss room. Out of nowhere, a window of the monster's stats opened up front in centre of my view.
She had, and it was still blocking my view of the monster. But for the first time, I knew what I was fighting before actually taking it on. Even if I had let it charge at me with its overbearingly ponderous steps.
In fact, she was able to locate and snip out its status page much faster than I could've found it. It was only then that I realized that she must've been quietly practising it with the monsters we were encountering along the way.
With that little acknowledgement, that was exactly what she had done. By the time we reached the 18th floor, she was able to make the status screen show up somewhere convenient within moments of encountering a monster. Even for the ones I avoided, as long as I looked at it for more than a split second, Alicia was able to show me its information at will.
It made me wonder if the lack of a physical body made it easier for her to concentrate her entire being into that single task, allowing her to do it so quickly and efficiently.
But not only was she fast and efficient, but she learned to cut out unimportant information, and presented me only the things she felt were important for me to know. For example, if a monster was armed with a weapon, I didn't need to know its skill in that weapon or weapons it didn't have, unless if there was a special reason to know like the skill being unusually high ranked, or could be used to surprise me if the fight lasted long enough.
Not only that, but she had started to tell me the most relevant information so that I only needed to glance at the monsters' status page if I wanted to get more information. Even though it was against monsters that I didn't need even the slightest amount of help with, I had no doubt that the ability to get that sort of information was tremendously useful, and would probably save my life sometime in the future.
Going back, as I looked at the high orcs in front of me, I was reminded of the taste of their blood I had back home. Last time I had any it was still quite delicious, so before I knew it, I was licking my lips.
The three high orcs came charging at me with the captain waiving a crude stone axe as long as I was tall while roaring. While whatever it yelled was incomprehensible to me, it seemed to be understandable enough for the other two orcs, and their charge increased in speed and ferocity. Most likely, a part of it was due to the captain's [Leadership] skill. The warrior held a smaller stone axe up high while holding the broken trunk of a tree in the other in front of it, while the bruiser held both hands in front of it like a crude mockery of a boxer's pose. In place of boxing gloves, the bruiser had stone slabs held in place on its knuckles with dirty looking strips of some animal's hide.
Being lighter, the bruiser reached me first and swung with its fist. Faster or not thought, it was still slow to me, and trivial to duck under the big and heavy fist. Kicking out a foot, I shattered its ankle, causing the large green-skinned brute to topple like a felled tree.
Even before the bruiser hit the ground, I moved to the warrior. It tried to swing down its axe in panic, but I simply stepped inside of its swing, then with a light hop, I brought myself in range of the orc's neck and bit down, sucking hard to fill myself as fast as I could.
The high orc tried to swing its weapon at me a second time, but due to being inside its range, it was unable to land a hit with the heavy blade, and instead bopped my back with the hilt. Realizing that I was too close to use its weapon effectively, the monster dropped its weapon and log, and instead tried to punch me off of it. But by that point, I had sucked enough blood out that it couldn't bear its full strength and its slow movements felt more like it was just teasing rather than actually trying to hurt me.
After two tries, the high orc warrior was too weak to stay on its feet, and limply fell to its knees.
Already aware of it without Alicia's warning, I simply let go of the warrior and let gravity take me as a massive fist flew, or rather sauntered, over my head, dryly smashing into the orc warrior's chest. Despite the monster's chest bursting open from the impact, the lack of blood in the body prevented it from splattering in all directions and instead its chest caved inwards, leaving a crater from the impact.
As the bruiser pulled back in frustration, I took advantage of the opening and pushed off of the long dead orc, sliding across the floor between the bruiser's legs. Unfortunately I got a face full of unwashed unmentionables forcing me to suppress the urge to hurl.
I hoped it wouldn't negatively effect Alicia's upbringing.
Pushing myself off of the ground, I leaped up and spun around before biting into the second high orc's neck, quickly draining it as it tried to grasp over its shoulder to pull me off. Within moments, the monster's efforts grew weak and in a few seconds it too fell lifelessly to its knees before toppling over entirely as I kicked off of its back.
Last, and while not least, certainly not very impressive, the high orc captain roared in fury. As its delay when it gave the other two instructions forced it to get a late start and was now all alone before it even got within melee range.
The captain swung its weapon with all its strength, but I simply sidestepped the wild swing, slightly annoyed at all the dirt that was sent flying and pattered against my robes as the stone weapon created a small crater in the grassy dirt. Without slowing down, I shifted towards and around the orc as it tried to follow up its attack with a quick back swing, but by the time it raised its weapon over its shoulder again, I was already behind it, and simply hopped up, a bit higher than with the previous orcs, and bit into its neck, quickly draining it as it thrashed around, trying to dislodge me.
Soon, I was the last one standing, as the high orc captain's body lifelessly collapsed onto the ground.
As the monster bodies disappeared, I grabbed the drops. Unlike the beginning, the drops might have been worth a decent amount of money, or had special uses that I wasn't aware of, so even things that I wasn't aware of its use went into my bag.
My mouth gaped open as the unexpected question came.
All I could do was sigh as I used magic to float the orc testicles over and dropped them into my bag, careful to avoid touching them.
(Someone kill me.)
We arrived in an empty fountain room for the next floor, my hand lightly rubbing my lower belly as my mind was filled against my will with thoughts that came about from Alicia and Claret's words.
The thought of touching, much less eating, those orc testicles made me want to hurl. But even beyond that, the very idea of becoming pregnant was something I had difficulty wrapping my head around.
Logically and conceptually speaking, it was a simple story. I was a woman, and while I didn't understand how my body worked in countless places, if I were to have a child, it would be as a mother, rather than a father. I would be the one to carry that child, for however long it took before reaching term.
If it came to wanting to go through that experience, I could confidently say that I never even considered it between both of my lives. At least until it was brought up earlier in the day.
My eyes went to the room's exit, but I wasn't really feeling up to continuing immediately.
(She hates it. She really hates the idea.)
I had no doubt of that. She was doing her best to not be selfish, but the way her voice quivered in my head left no doubt in my mind.
There wasn't really any options for me at this point. I simply had to do my best to find a way to make Alicia's dream come true.
I could only sigh internally to how excited the little girl sounded.
Ninetailed_Furball Hi everybody! It's your usual furball! (/◕ヮ◕)/
Sorry I was a little late. Too many distractions lately make it so difficult to get enough progress on the chapters until I'm pretty much pushing against my release schedule! (_ _)
That said, this was an interesting chapter for me to write. Didn't quite go how I expected it to, but I'm relatively satisfied.
Hope you guys enjoy it at least! I have great expectations for the comments. Last time was pretty great! ＼(◎o◎)／
Now then, see ya! (≧∇≦)/
The three of us continued on through the dungeon, speeding our way past the weak monsters while I looked forward to facing off against something strong or unusual. It had been quite a long time since I had been challenged, and I didn't count that hydra as one considering the state I was in.
Alicia's voice reverberated in my head while the monsters' stat pages appeared in the corner of my vision. Ever since Alicia discovered she could use [Scan], she had started practising its use, and as soon as she could started to give me combat advice however she could.
At first it took quite some time for her to find the section to display the monster's status. Part of it was my fault, as I just flew past all the mobs and only engaged the bosses because I had to. Even then I generally just took them out with a simple shot of magic.
For the first six floors, that was basically all I did. But when I got distracted admiring the shape and colour of a red leaf that was falling from above, a lone orc started charging at me in the autumn forest themed boss room. Out of nowhere, a window of the monster's stats opened up front in centre of my view.
She had, and it was still blocking my view of the monster. But for the first time, I knew what I was fighting before actually taking it on. Even if I had let it charge at me with its overbearingly ponderous steps.
In fact, she was able to locate and snip out its status page much faster than I could've found it. It was only then that I realized that she must've been quietly practising it with the monsters we were encountering along the way.
With that little acknowledgement, that was exactly what she had done. By the time we reached the 18th floor, she was able to make the status screen show up somewhere convenient within moments of encountering a monster. Even for the ones I avoided, as long as I looked at it for more than a split second, Alicia was able to show me its information at will.
It made me wonder if the lack of a physical body made it easier for her to concentrate her entire being into that single task, allowing her to do it so quickly and efficiently.
But not only was she fast and efficient, but she learned to cut out unimportant information, and presented me only the things she felt were important for me to know. For example, if a monster was armed with a weapon, I didn't need to know its skill in that weapon or weapons it didn't have, unless if there was a special reason to know like the skill being unusually high ranked, or could be used to surprise me if the fight lasted long enough.
Not only that, but she had started to tell me the most relevant information so that I only needed to glance at the monsters' status page if I wanted to get more information. Even though it was against monsters that I didn't need even the slightest amount of help with, I had no doubt that the ability to get that sort of information was tremendously useful, and would probably save my life sometime in the future.
Going back, as I looked at the high orcs in front of me, I was reminded of the taste of their blood I had back home. Last time I had any it was still quite delicious, so before I knew it, I was licking my lips.
The three high orcs came charging at me with the captain waiving a crude stone axe as long as I was tall while roaring. While whatever it yelled was incomprehensible to me, it seemed to be understandable enough for the other two orcs, and their charge increased in speed and ferocity. Most likely, a part of it was due to the captain's [Leadership] skill. The warrior held a smaller stone axe up high while holding the broken trunk of a tree in the other in front of it, while the bruiser held both hands in front of it like a crude mockery of a boxer's pose. In place of boxing gloves, the bruiser had stone slabs held in place on its knuckles with dirty looking strips of some animal's hide.
Being lighter, the bruiser reached me first and swung with its fist. Faster or not thought, it was still slow to me, and trivial to duck under the big and heavy fist. Kicking out a foot, I shattered its ankle, causing the large green-skinned brute to topple like a felled tree.
Even before the bruiser hit the ground, I moved to the warrior. It tried to swing down its axe in panic, but I simply stepped inside of its swing, then with a light hop, I brought myself in range of the orc's neck and bit down, sucking hard to fill myself as fast as I could.
The high orc tried to swing its weapon at me a second time, but due to being inside its range, it was unable to land a hit with the heavy blade, and instead bopped my back with the hilt. Realizing that I was too close to use its weapon effectively, the monster dropped its weapon and log, and instead tried to punch me off of it. But by that point, I had sucked enough blood out that it couldn't bear its full strength and its slow movements felt more like it was just teasing rather than actually trying to hurt me.
After two tries, the high orc warrior was too weak to stay on its feet, and limply fell to its knees.
Already aware of it without Alicia's warning, I simply let go of the warrior and let gravity take me as a massive fist flew, or rather sauntered, over my head, dryly smashing into the orc warrior's chest. Despite the monster's chest bursting open from the impact, the lack of blood in the body prevented it from splattering in all directions and instead its chest caved inwards, leaving a crater from the impact.
As the bruiser pulled back in frustration, I took advantage of the opening and pushed off of the long dead orc, sliding across the floor between the bruiser's legs. Unfortunately I got a face full of unwashed unmentionables forcing me to suppress the urge to hurl.
I hoped it wouldn't negatively effect Alicia's upbringing.
Pushing myself off of the ground, I leaped up and spun around before biting into the second high orc's neck, quickly draining it as it tried to grasp over its shoulder to pull me off. Within moments, the monster's efforts grew weak and in a few seconds it too fell lifelessly to its knees before toppling over entirely as I kicked off of its back.
Last, and while not least, certainly not very impressive, the high orc captain roared in fury. As its delay when it gave the other two instructions forced it to get a late start and was now all alone before it even got within melee range.
The captain swung its weapon with all its strength, but I simply sidestepped the wild swing, slightly annoyed at all the dirt that was sent flying and pattered against my robes as the stone weapon created a small crater in the grassy dirt. Without slowing down, I shifted towards and around the orc as it tried to follow up its attack with a quick back swing, but by the time it raised its weapon over its shoulder again, I was already behind it, and simply hopped up, a bit higher than with the previous orcs, and bit into its neck, quickly draining it as it thrashed around, trying to dislodge me.
Soon, I was the last one standing, as the high orc captain's body lifelessly collapsed onto the ground.
As the monster bodies disappeared, I grabbed the drops. Unlike the beginning, the drops might have been worth a decent amount of money, or had special uses that I wasn't aware of, so even things that I wasn't aware of its use went into my bag.
My mouth gaped open as the unexpected question came.
All I could do was sigh as I used magic to float the orc testicles over and dropped them into my bag, careful to avoid touching them.
(Someone kill me.)
We arrived in an empty fountain room for the next floor, my hand lightly rubbing my lower belly as my mind was filled against my will with thoughts that came about from Alicia and Claret's words.
The thought of touching, much less eating, those orc testicles made me want to hurl. But even beyond that, the very idea of becoming pregnant was something I had difficulty wrapping my head around.
Logically and conceptually speaking, it was a simple story. I was a woman, and while I didn't understand how my body worked in countless places, if I were to have a child, it would be as a mother, rather than a father. I would be the one to carry that child, for however long it took before reaching term.
If it came to wanting to go through that experience, I could confidently say that I never even considered it between both of my lives. At least until it was brought up earlier in the day.
My eyes went to the room's exit, but I wasn't really feeling up to continuing immediately.
(She hates it. She really hates the idea.)
I had no doubt of that. She was doing her best to not be selfish, but the way her voice quivered in my head left no doubt in my mind.
There wasn't really any options for me at this point. I simply had to do my best to find a way to make Alicia's dream come true.
I could only sigh internally to how excited the little girl sounded.
Ninetailed_Furball Hi everybody! It's your usual furball! (/◕ヮ◕)/
Sorry I was a little late. Too many distractions lately make it so difficult to get enough progress on the chapters until I'm pretty much pushing against my release schedule! (_ _)
That said, this was an interesting chapter for me to write. Didn't quite go how I expected it to, but I'm relatively satisfied.
Hope you guys enjoy it at least! I have great expectations for the comments. Last time was pretty great! ＼(◎o◎)／
Now then, see ya! (≧∇≦)/
