I went back to the driver's seat and strapped in. Hypocrisy and Mustache got in after Robin strapped into her gunnery station, and we went on our merry way. I noticed that there was a sentient marked "girl" surrounded by monsters in my minimap, and we swung by to see what was up. It was odd that she wasn't dead yet, almost as odd as a lone girl out here in the middle of nowhere.
We got there in under a minute, and Robin blew all ten beastmen away with the kinetics. They're such pushovers. Then we searched the camp.
It was a classic scene. The beastmen had the girl soaking in an olive oil marinade. I took a sniff. The herbs smelled like rosemary, thyme, and a hint of black pepper. I guessed the reason she was still alive was that they thought a simple thing like decapitation would kill her. Huh. Robin looked put out by the girl's state, but that was easy enough to fix.
"Analyze and save," I commanded. This had to be good. System sent me the information.
Birth Name: Diamond Snow
Age: 1890 years, 151 days, 5 hours, 6 seconds
Species: Human (Immortal Variant)
Qi Ascension in progress, power gathering stage 2% complete and dropping
Time until death: 1 minute
There was more information, including how her parents prepared her conception so that she would be immortal, how she grew up, and how she learned about qi. I had wondered how mere beastmen could take down an Ascender, but apparently it was a freaking world snake, an Ouroboros. Just getting her head torn off and losing consciousness was getting off lightly, but before she could recover enough to connect back to her body, the beastmen found her and marinaded her. Their teeth couldn't bite her, and they were trying to soften her up. Unfortunately, that caused her enough agony that she passed out again.
Well, might as well save her since I'm here. I put her head back on her body, and then supplied the magic. Her qi took care of the rest. She began to scream as oil poured out her, and her neck started stitching itself back together. I shielded her mind from the pain, and used magic to abolish the oil and grime that clung to her and now me.
She was quite the sight. She was naked, as the beastmen had torn the clothes off her body with their teeth when they tried to gnaw on her. She had the figure of a girl just growing into womanhood, with only small developments to note. Her immortality had kicked in at the beginning of puberty, leaving her a permanently hormonal, emotional mess until she started altering herself with qi cultivation. She had pure white hair and silver eyes, a cute button nose, and full rosy cheeks.
Robin caught me staring at Diamond, but was feeling surprisingly ok with it. Hot dog, the world's Law of Hero harems must be at work here! I did not think she'd be ok with another woman, and what am I even thinking?!
Diamond finished healing, opened her eyes and saw me. Her body was once more a hormonal mess, and she was feeling the magic energy I fed her as well as experiencing my warmth and strength as I picked her up. Instead of sensibly asking questions or requesting clothes, the first thing she did when she saw me holding her up was to wrap herself around me and give me a passionate kiss. Man, did I want to take her into the Death Machine for some physical attention. There were a couple issues with that.
First of all, I had not planned for a harem. Robin really was enough for me. She was girl power embodied! I didn't want to take away any attention from her. I guess Diamond could be a one time thing, but again that meant there would be other one time things. I didn't want to be a player.
The second problem was that my Will was being coerced by the world's Law. I felt horribly vulnerable now that I knew that I could still be swayed even with a Will strong enough to fight against dissolution into the Void. I wanted to lash out and fling Diamond into a tree, to vent my rage and frustration on her for being so attractive when I just wanted to keep my head!
However, none of this was Diamond's fault. Leaving her unsatisfied or hurting her would be unfair to her. In fact, from what I now knew of Diamond through System's Analyze and my own psychic powers, I really liked her. She was a very ladylike person, unlike my tomboyish Robin. At the same time, Robin was perfectly fine with me taking Diamond inside and satisfying her because her Will was also swayed due to the Law.
In the end, I didn't leave Diamond unsatisfied. I did make sure that Robin joined us though. I couldn't have my main girl wait on the sidelines. That would be a jerk move. I also found out that I could act as a empathic relay between them so that each could get the most out of our exertions.
Afterwards, lying with both my girls passed out from their exertions, I pondered my next move. No more traveling for me, I decided. That would just increase the likelihood of me picking up another member. I would just set up the truck as my main base of operations and set forth my plan to finish this Hero Quest in a rather unorthodox fashion.
I also decided that I needed to add a World Law Book feature to System, as well as continue to temper my personal Will. While I had been aware of the Law's manipulation of circumstance because of my strong Will, I may not always have such enjoyable outcomes. I needed to be prepared to fight with Reality itself if I did not like what it was doing.
"System, add feature World Law Book. The book should contain a basic summary of the analysis of the Laws that govern the world. Priority mention should be given to Laws that differ from the norm, like the Law of Hero Harems in Spagetti's World, or River Styx in Hades."
"Creating the algorithm," System sussurated. "Upgrading and saving as System 1.30. Please think or say the command 'World Law Book' to materialize the book before you."
"Thank you, dear System." I sent it my love and appreciation. Now it was time to set up the endgame.