I leave Jarn floating in the void and holding a board with a [Gate] coordinate on it while the rest of us take the (now repaired) airship back to the tornado and assemble our adventuring party again.
After Lily hears the news of what I did, she doesn't stop staring at me like she's trying to see my spirit, so I cast [Materialization] on myself, which reveals a glowing blue fist pushing out of my chest as it grips something that looks like a piece of cloth, which is quite interesting.
"He actually did it… How did he not kill himself?" Lily hums to Alissa, sounding quite dumbfounded, which explains why her tone is so gentle, even though she's talking to one of my girls.
And my little fox sighs tiredly, then dryly replies as she gives me a very unamused stare, "I wonder the same. This is far from the first time he's done something like this, and not every time has it gone as smoothly."
"He sounds like a handful. Something about magic makes the boys go stupid with it," the cute loli hums and makes a crude snort.
"I believe Miss Lily will enjoy hearing the following analogy," Ted suddenly chimes in as the two dolls briefly come down from the bridge.
"'Caring for Master Wolf is like caring for a child; you often have to stop them from killing themselves in rather creative ways,'" Suzy finishes, speaking two sentences because Jarn isn't here to say her third.
"Golems, what the fuck?" I blurt out, so dumbfounded that I almost lose my grip on my Thread.
"We know that Master doesn't mind 'banter,'" Ted begins.
"So your question puzzles us," Suzy finishes. Then they both cutely tilt their heads at the same, exactly like how Alissa likes to, which is so refreshing that I immediately forgive them.
Then I snort softly and casually explain, "It was kind of a rhetorical question, a hook for someone to make a joke, but your response was adorable, so it's also acceptable."
But I'm not the one that was impressed by their little performance. "Aren't golems supposed to have your personality? Why are they so 'robotic'?" Lily curiously inquires.
And I can already tell what she's going to ask next because of the answer that I give, "A quirk from [Summoning Magic] to make them obedient. In truth, their minds are so obsessed with obeying us that their emotions are suppressed."
She gives me her iconic frown, which I love because it looks sexy but hate because she's fucking annoying. "That sounds like a horrible existence. Are you sure it's ethical to create golems?"
"Didn't you say you were tired of talking about morality?" I smugly retort and lean forward as I stare down at the shortie just to intimidate her further.
"I'm curious about your reasoning to excuse their existence," she slowly replies as her right eye twitches. Of course, she would never fall for such a lazy attempt, but it still annoys her, which is just fine with me.
And so I calmly answer, very happy with myself, "'Obsession' doesn't mean 'pain' or 'agony.' Their minds are literally too busy to feel or care about anything but obeying us. I know because my telepathy lets me sense their feelings, too."
She raises a skeptical eyebrow, but she's tired of arguing, so she just dryly remarks, sounding like she actually barely cares, "Now it's your 'telepathy' that's starting to make me worried."
But Alissa won't even give her that, so my unwaveringly pious fox gently but firmly states, "I won't accept you questioning this. Our connection is a holy thing."
And Lily decides that things will be much easier if she stops caring, so she shrugs. "Fine by me. I'd rather not mess with religion."
--
Now it's Chesa's turn to work hard again, and though the girl does comply with our request, she doesn't sound thrilled with it.
"Perhaps we can aid her by using our wings," Oritiki kindly suggests.
Have I ever told you that I fucking love how hard-working and proactive Oritiki is? Because I do, and if I had to choose one spirit Chimera out of all of those that came with us (excluding my women because that'd be unfair), I'd always pick Oritiki no matter what.
Infected by my boundless eagerness, Ciel happily replies, "That'd be wonderful. It seems like [Wind Aspect] and her Gift work on similar principles, so perhaps it'll work."
And the slender girl raises an eyebrow, looking mildly annoyed that she now has to also work together with the Horns, but she doesn't complain out loud. It doesn't take long for them to come to an agreement on how to do it, and it does seem that she manages to open a hole in the tornado faster than last time with their help, so there's no harm done.
And so, we call Alcander to have him [Gate] the Horns, and we decide to put on our armor in case we're attacked. Then we finally dive once again into the dark cloud of dust, now guided by my Thread.
--
We spend longer inside it than last time, but now, Chesa is rested, so she can also last quite a while. At first, I'm quite happy to just wait, but then I start to get a weird feeling from the "tug" of my Thread.
I stand by the prow for a long time, trying to decode what I'm feeling, and then it finally hits me. The "tug" is changing direction.
"Chesa, we have to turn," I gently inform her.
"Sure, tell me where to," she hums and gives me a glance, making her head-tail sway. Her padded coif is a bit unwieldy due to her head's shape, so she keeps it off unless we're in battle, which does make her more vulnerable to assassination, Roxanne.
"Hmph," the succubus in question moans childishly as she finds her coif unfashionable.
Anyway, it's a bit difficult to describe the exact direction, so I answer more vaguely, "Just… open a path towards where the ship is pointing to."
And she shrugs. "Sure…"
But the "tug" continues to turn at an increasingly higher speed, which is puzzling.
"It must be moving at a very high speed for you to be able to feel the change from this distance…" Yunia curiously hums.
"What's with the turning?" Lily questions as she approaches.
Urmeie is staring at the dark, billowing clouds with empty eyes, as if her spirit has died of boredom, but Lily's question makes her turn to us and show just a little bit of interest again.
"I don't know, but the portal might be moving," I answer with uncertainty.
And she frowns skeptically. "Are we even sure that your 'Thread' is taking us towards a portal?"
"That, we also don't know," Yunia answers for me as I'm getting too distracted.
Then the portal stops moving when we've basically done a 90º turn to the right, so now, we continue forward, and I feel that we're actually getting closer to my Thread's "target." Using [Soul Manipulation] for so long is starting to get tiring, so it's about time.
"We're getting close," I eagerly announce, and Caterina twitches, seeming like she was starting to get drowsy.
"Oooh~…" Kellogs sarcastically hums, looking more bored than Urmeie, likely because he isn't allowed to get high.
"Perhaps you should use your Gift to see ahead, Sir Samkelo," Yunia solemnly suggests just to make him sweat a bit as she feels rather offended by his lack of enthusiasm.
But her sadistic suggestion turns serious as our quarry starts to show that it's quite shy. "Wait, it's… moving again. It's moving away! Golems, full speed!" I desperately order. This dungeon is starting to get on my nerves with how protective it is.
And so, Yunia pressures Kellogs with a stern gaze.
"Fuck me…" Alissa hears him mumble. Then he turns towards the prow and squints.
Chesa frowns as she starts to struggle to keep up with our speed, and I worry that our time might be running out, so I have the Horns constantly help her. There are enough of them that we can just rotate the helpers almost indefinitely if we go with groups of four.
But even though we seem to be getting closer to the fleeing target, it's still considerably far away.
--
Well, with Kellogs looking ahead, we can easily spot ruins coming our way, and since it seems like we have time, I grab some interesting pieces and also pull out the cannon that I stole from the fortress, and then I get everyone to inspect them. Urmeie is absolutely impervious to scholarly curiosity, so she remains bored, but at least everyone else has something to do.
"This looks different from every other metal I've seen…" Thant hums curiously as he inspects the cannon closely. Then he surprises us by saying something smart, "Wait, these have been machined. No other metal in Rupegia has these grains, which come from a lathe." I realized that the instant I looked at the cannon, so of course, he deserves the praise for being almost as smart as me.
And I sagely explain, "Exactly. Most metals in Rupegia are forged either by smithing or by magical manipulation, and lathes and similar tools simply don't exist here."
"Which is extremely odd as Breeder-type societies have only ever mimicked humanoids," Yunia soberly adds.
"But this is an ancient dungeon, so perhaps they developed Earthling-similar technology on their own," Alissa tentatively suggests.
There's just one big problem with that. "But why? Why not just use magic like the Rupegians?" I question with a frown.
"A lathe sounds like something a dragonkin would use," Hana suddenly remarks, and we're a bit puzzled by her suggestion. She shrugs and smiles as she wistfully fantasizes, "Carving a piece of metal into the thing you want by spinning either it or the tool super fast sounds as awesome as elven hair. Either the dragonkin or the gnomes would think of something like that."
"'Would' or 'have'?" Ciel wisely points out. "These monsters either developed this technology on their own, or they're merely copying Earthling technology that's being used somewhere in the Realm."
"The Heretics who saved Alki-Alki and recruited Reinhold," I immediately suggest.
But now it's Alissa's turn to point out the flaw, "But why would they be Earthlings?"
That's a good question. Why would the Gods summon Earthlings if the previous Earthlings had defected to the Heretic's side?
The three of The Four simply stare at us with raised eyebrows, not knowing how to join the conversation about heretics and dead Gifted, and Kellogs decides to resume squinting forward. But we also don't have any more speculations to make, so we turn back to the ruins again.
We find a few pieces of debris, and we recognize a chair, a table, roof tiles, ceiling support beams, a door, a religious cross, a wardrobe, and some other assorted things. It's a bit like a puzzle where you try to come up with the whole picture of a society from just a few pieces.
"Is this what archaeologists do?" Thant wryly muses out loud.
"Most likely, though with a lot more digging as they certainly don't 'fish' whole walls from a tornado," I casually answer with a smirk.
And Lily adds a more serious point, "Also a lot more meticulous work than just 'here's a new wall.' If you dig things wrong, you break stuff."
"What's 'arc-e-o-logis'?" Aoi innocently asks, her voice as gentle as a dragon's could be.
The golems are a bit too far away to answer, so I do it in their stead, "The study of old civilizations. Imagine large cities that have been lying abandoned for centuries. Not only do they get covered in vegetation again, but so much dirt gathers that they become buried in it."
"A city, buried…" Alissa wistfully hums as she fantasizes. The concept appeals to her romantic mind.
"But it'd take years to dig a whole city up," Ciel points out with a frown, the concept not appealing to her adventuring mind.
I nod and chuckle softly as another thing occurs to me. "Exactly, and not only that, but… trash piles tell a lot about the history and way of life of a civilization."
"Ew…" Roxanne quietly groans, and Alcander mirrors her expression, which I find amusing.
"I see you're all having fun," Chesa suddenly remarks as she looks at us from the corner of her eye, sounding a bit strained.
"Not really…" Kellogs dryly mumbles, barely mustering enough energy to even speak, and Urmeie would agree if she were paying any attention to the conversation.
"You're doing good work, as always, Chesa, so keep it up," I huskily encourage her with a very fatherly smile, and she actually pauses for a second as my high "Charisma" has most certainly made her heart skip a beat.
Then she looks forward again in a rather tsundere-ish way, which I find adorable, but I also get a glare from a certain cinnamon loli, so I've gotta be careful with the timing of my seduction. I wholly expect Lily to cockblock me to protect her daughteru, but I believe all women deserve to be Ravaged at least once in their lives, so I'm gonna do Chesa a favor.
--
We continue our archaeology work to distract ourselves as the journey inside the tornado drags on, but even though the ship is going as fast as it can, it's still taking a while to catch up with the fleeing portal.
So I stare at the big-ass sail at the center of the ship and get an idea. I summon ten wind-Alissas and have them all blow air into the sail, but this makes us tilt forward and strains the mast, so I split them into three groups and have two of them blow wind into the wings instead. Also, lowering the angle at which the elementals blow air into the sail reduces the tilting.
We pick up a lot of speed, which strains Chesa even further, so Oritiki and the Horns have to stay at the top of their game to aid the mergirl.
"You worry more about this girl than the other Earthlings," Alissa quietly whispers as she gives me a both teasing and reproving stare.
"For obvious reasons," I reply in kind and give her a peck on her little nose.
Her reproval is instantly wiped away, and her tail starts to wag because of both the kiss and the prospect of seeing me fuck an Earthling. Something about seducing a girl to the point that we corrupt her with Rupegian morals makes my Cock throb and her pussy get wet.
And since we're talking about being kind to her, I push myself a bit and summon three more wind-Alissas to help Chesa. All these elemental-wives constantly working consumes a lot of MP, so I have the girls help by feeding them mana, and since we can recover our MP through [Redirect Mana], we can do this for quite a while.
"How can I use these elemental-wives to help you?" I soothingly ask as I approach the delicate sky-skinned girl.
"You've… you've helped a lot, already," she shyly replies, completely ignoring the "wives" part.
"We're a team now," I retort and grace her with a handsome smile. I'm also getting tired of maintaining my grip on my Thread for so long, so helping her is worth the effort.
She glances at me, then at Lily in search of approval, which she seems to find, even though the loli is suspicious of my flirting. She lets out a cute, girlish sigh, then blesses me with a kind smile as she makes an effort to find a way for me to help, "Well… alright. Maybe you can, like, open a hole in the clouds? It's easier to 'spread' them if I have a hole I can 'get a hold of.'"
"Sure thing," I huskily hum and nod at the elemental-wives, who've been listening to our conversation.
"If it gets easier, then maybe I can help speed us up, too," Chesa optimistically adds, which is something nice to see coming from her.
So I reward her with another handsome smile. "That'd be wonderful, thank you."
And she just shyly nods, making her head-tail bob.
--
We have no concept of speed as we lack instruments and any point of reference to gauge it, but it does seem like the ship is straining with the pressure from all the wind blowing into it, and, of course, we're now approaching the portal much faster than before.
"I say five minutes until we reach it!" I excitedly exclaim, and Hana, Caterina, and Urmeie jolt awake.
It seems that only Gify and I were actually interested in archaeology, so everyone else brightens up at the prospect of ending this little journey, though Hana is sad that her beloved elven milf isn't drowsily leaning on her shoulder anymore.
And Roxanne comes up to me and quietly apologizes, "Sorry, Wolfy, but we dislike monsters too much to care about their society, though your curiosity is one of the things we love about you."
I'm mostly curious about the crosses, but this amateurish archaeology work was also fun, even though we learned nothing about their religion. Then I feel the girls send their love through [Bind], so I grab her pale, slender hand and give it a loving kiss that's meant for everyone.
"I like hearing his thoughts, though," Aoi gently remarks through [Bind] to not scare everyone else on the ship.
But then the portal suddenly makes a sharp turn, ending our little flirty chatter prematurely.
"I think the bastard might be trying to escape us," I soberly announce as the ship aligns itself with it again.
"Wouldn't be a true adventure without complications," Ciel cheerfully remarks, and her unrelenting optimism is very soothing on this monotonous journey.
"I'm speeding up!" Chesa suddenly shouts, sounding rather frustrated.
And the increased stress on the airship makes the wings and mast groan, making me worried that my baby will get hurt again.
"D-don't speed us up any further," I hesitatingly request.
"I'm getting us there!" she shouts back in rising anger, and I cry internally.
"I'll keep the airship together," Yunia states telepathically, then cuts her wrist with a dagger and drips blood on the deck, deeply puzzling the Earthlings. [Weaverism] will be fun to explain, but I'd rather let them be creeped out for a little longer because it's pretty funny.
Chesa speeds us up even further, and then Kellogs finally confirms it for us, "I can see it! It's the portal!"
But then the fleeing bastard speeds up even more, almost fully canceling our gain on it.
"Fuck! Push it a bit more!" I request, so frustrated that I even accept a little bit of harm to my baby.
"I can handle it!" Yunia reassures us. Well, reassures me, mostly.
"This fucking portal!" Chesa shouts angrily, and her light-blue skin reddens as her emotions rise.
"Bring everyone who's rested!" Oritiki shouts to Paraaone, so he goes to Alcander, who's already opening a [Gate] again.
"I can handle a hundred soldiers with ease, so go as fast as you need to," the High Officer proudly states.
And a short moment later, a flurry of wings comes out of the black circle.
The Horns immediately take up a grid formation in front of the airship and flap their wings at the dark, swirling cloud of dust, pushing it back faster and allowing Chesa to focus almost entirely on speeding us up.
"Might as well top them off," Roxanne hums and feeds the wind-Alissas with all of her MP, then refills her pool with [Redirect Mana], which of course causes strain on her mana organ, so there will be a lot of rewarding to be done tonight.
"Almost there!" Kellogs excitedly shouts as he still squints forward.
And the tug on my Thread quickly becomes so strong that it's almost maddening, but then it also starts to give me a sort of dread and anxiety. It's almost like it's a premonition…
"Hana!" I shout, and she immediately reads my mind as there's no time to say it properly.
Then she summons her dazzling emerald wings, now healed back to their full glorious form, and she promptly shoots off the deck and into the tornado.
She needs to activate her [Fly] enchantment to not be swept away, and even then, the winds are so strong that her mana drains away as if her organ has a leak. It's actually going down so fast that she might only have a minute.
Which is fifty seconds longer than she needs to find the fleeing, glowing sphere.
She unhesitatingly throws herself into it, and a second later, we're showered with a burst of Space-flavored mana as someone casts something similar to [Warp Space], suddenly stretching the distance between us and the portal so much that I can barely feel the tug from my Thread. But the fucker is too late!
"It escaped!" Kellogs shouts in despair.
"No, it didn't!" I victoriously roar back and laugh out loud. Then I cast [Gate] at the same time that Hana pulls out a board with a coordinate.
The problem is, she's seeing… double? So we hesitate for a second before we touch the black circle on the deck, but we can't let her stay there alone, so the wives and I cross through it.
Then we all promptly fall to the ground as we completely lose our balance.
Not only are we all seeing triple…? But our other senses are also fooling us. It's like the ground is at our backs, while at the same time, it isn't. We try to get a hold of the stone floor, but we can't even turn around for some reason.
It's so confusing and disorienting that even Gify chirps in desperation and flails about while the golems all laser focus on us, trying to find a way to help, but they're also unable to understand what's going on.
The only thing I can do is [Gate] us all back, and the moment we're all back on the deck, both Lina and Roxanne puke, and then Ciel casts [Purify Body], stopping the rest of us from suffering the same fate.
I stand up and grab my loli while Hana cares for our succubus wife, and then we take a moment to catch our breaths while everyone else stares at us in worry.
"What happened, Your Highnesses?" Oritiki whispers, bewildered at the bizarre situation.
"I have no fucking idea…" I mumble, still in shock.
"Hmm… send me there," Urmeie impatiently requests with a curious grunt.
And you know what? I won't even stop her.
--
--
Hall of Fame of Patrons
The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:
Prince PreownedFIN.
Prince Owldente.
Lord Andrew Meyers.
Lord Bakerdea.
Lord Maurice.
Lord Mattirro Draca.
Lord Tenebris Lupus.
Lord Paul Daval.
Lord Paul Daval.
Lord Tmac.
Lord CopeyDunt.
Lord BlindTactic.
Lord Philip.
Lord d3235.
Lord SubJef.
Lord GalacticTNT.
Lord FrostyCube.
Lord Glaistig Uaine.
Lord School work.
Lord Beater.
Lord patrick__starz.
Lord Peter Kraushuber
Lord David England.
Lord Cidant.
Lord Marwin33.
Lord time Campbell.
Noble Aclys.
Noble Carl Baxter.
Noble Tony Starrk.
Noble DND.
Noble Anon A Moose.
Noble warmoger55.
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