The only thing he could hear now that he was stood before Liora was the sound of her foot tapping rapidly against the wood. Her eyes boring holes through his body.
"And where have you been?" she questioned, her voice rutheless and unflinching in its tone.
"Just, uh, exploring?" he answered, his own voice lacking in energy to resist.
"The fields?"
He gulped his head jerkily shaking, "n-no, the forest."
Liora's eyes narrowed to slits. Her tapping foot halting and her rapping against her forearm stopping. Slowly, she lifted a hand up, travelling it through the air above Noah's head. Him sensing the feeling of an impending slap prepped himself to nurse himself of the new-to-form bump.
But thankfully he found that wound did not come as Liora's hand softly came to rest on his head. Gently ruffling his tawny locks and bringing him to look up at her. Paling at her malevolent smile. He barely had time to process pain when her hand rolled down his cheek and pinched his earlobes to drag him into the house.
"Ow-ow-ow-ow," he chattered stumbling after Liora's swaying hips as she dragged him through the house and into the dinning room. Throwing him into one of the chairs and walked around to the other side to seat herself. Crossing her arms once again when she did.
"Do you have any idea how many monsters are in that forest!" she leaned forwards and nearly screamed out her words. "Hounds, pixies, dryads, fairies, alraunes, bees, wormlings, arachnae," she counted each one on her fingers. "Every single one more than willing to drag you to their hovel and have their way with you be that raping you into conversion or eating your intestines for lunch!
'Convert?' his breath hitched, that word sounding ominous in meaning if what it meant was actually what he thought it meant.
"Con… convert?" he attempted to question though his word went unheard as Liora kept ranting.
"It's a miracle you even came back! I don't know anyone in your state who could even resist a single pixie let alone the Kanyon wolves coming out nowadays!"
He was guessing a Kanyon wolf was the official name for that wolf girl he's encountered and spent a good hour screwing.
"You are lucky to have escaped in your state Noah-" her voice staggered as she eyed his attire, noting its relatively haggard and dirty appearance and a few indented portions on his shirt in what looked like teeth marks. "Noah… did you run into any monsters while you were in the forest?"
He swallowed a lump, feeling fearful for what would happen if he said yes but just as terrified as to what would happen if he said no or kept silent and she saw through him, a thing he felt was inevitable with how stern her gaze was. "Yeah."
Liora's lips pursed shut. Her cheek lightly twitching for a few what-felt-like minutes before finally letting out a sigh and rubbed her face. Flinching from the pain doing so caused her arm. "Did… you have sex with one?" she questioned, her voice falling to a strangely soft but worried tone.
Lifting his gaze to her, he could see true concern raised in her expression. Her entire body tense as she awaited his answer. It was such an expression that would stop Noah from lying even if he wanted to.
Swallowing down a dollop of saliva, he parted his lips to answer, his face a light flush "I… yes, I did." Not having had much choice in the endeavor.
Immediately Liora's expression went dark, the concern quickly morphing to panic and resignation. "Then we need to take you to the church to have you purified before you start converting." She lifted her uninjured arm and began to nibble on the nail of her thumb.
A church, converting? She uttered both but neither figured anything into his mind though both were obvious. Churches were the basic holy land where nuns and priests resided to cure ailments and promulgate their gods teachings. In games they often took up the place of the healers and the supporters though how they factored in this world seemed to be along the lines of purifying whatever this conversion she mentioned was.
'I'm not going to turn into a werewolf am I?' this thought quickly added to by the branch of cherry blossoms leaning against the wall not far from his vision, 'a tree werewolf?'
"I'm sorry Liora, I didn't know going into the forest would be so bad," he did, he was just too dense to realize that thinking it would be just like forest back home. Safe. "But what's this about conversion? Am I going to turn into a monster then?"
"Maybe," Liora threw her hand up to cast him a soft, tired smile. "It depends on what you had sex with. Can you tell me what it was?" she asked.
He was not used to speaking about his sexual endeavors, especially not with a mature lady like Liora, "It was a, uh, wolf… girl… woman, she had blue fur, dark skin, red nails."
She processed his description for a few minute moments, scanning through her thoughts before locking firmly onto the image of one, "a Kanyon wolf then," she sighed out a relieved breath. "Then you should be fine. They aren't a particularly corrupting species so it shouldn't have gotten much Manos into your body. But back to what converting is…" she trailed off, pondering how she should explain it to the as-far-as-she-knew amnesiac.
"Converting is for a lack of a better term enslavement to the monster. In us humans, we have a form of mana called Ethos, monsters thrive off of the stuff, it makes them stronger, keeps them alive, it basically makes us humans a delicacy and they can take our ethos through sex. In the process they will fill up the emptied space of ethos with their own manos. I can't really tell you much other than that, I'm really not a professional in the subject but from what I've heard from Harv and Ellie is that all monsters have their own unique form of manos which when it infests a humans body can start converting them into a monster as well. After that, they aren't human anymore, their just another monster."
Noah aptly listened to her short speech and to what she said following it.
"But considering it was a Kanyon wolf, that shouldn't be much of an issue. At most all you'll need to worry about is her coming back next year for a second round or a few puppies coming to their papa."
A mysterious ticking noise clicked through the room as Noah, blinked once and then twice. "I'm sorry, puppies?"
"Oh yes, we're getting into the breeding season for the Kanyon wolves. They've been crossing the mountain range looking for mates probably for weeks now. Actually… now that I think about it, it should be close to the end of their mating season…" she shrugged and continued what she was saying, "unless you found and did the deed with one of the males, you probably got a female pregnant and now she's heading on up the mountain to raise them up once they pop out."
Noah's face went pale, paler than when Serris had told him her own possibilities at know popping out miniature hers. 'I really shouldn't have expected any less,' he leaned his head back and slumped into his seat to stare blankly at the ceiling. A sight Liora found mildly amusing to say the least.
"I should actually congratulate you a bit," Liora giggle into her hand drawing his gaze onto her.
"And why's that?"
"Because, they're also known to be a loyal species of monster. The females often return to their mates and stay by their side like dogs. Harv's been trying to get one for years."
He went blank, so he was now to expect the same wolf girl to come back in the future? 'wait, no, her husband has been trying to get one?'
"Uh, Liora, if you don't mind me asking. Why do you seem so calm that your husband was trying to find one?"
She tilted her head his way with a curious frown, "Oh, they're also supposedly really good herders. Harv wanted to get into ranching before he…" she trailed off for a moment, her demeanor sinking into a pit of depressional appearances, "before he died."
"Okay, but wouldn't that mean he'd be having sex with a monstergirl then? You're husband?"
Her demeanour quickly settled down and perked up slightly as she gave him a straight nod and uttered, "yes, he would." The calmness of which went against Noah's monogamous upbringing.
"And that doesn't bother you?"
"No, not really. It's just a natural thing after all. Especially with monsters. I don't really mind," she shrugged. "I won't lie, Harv was obsessed with the things. At one point I thought he was corrupting Ellie with all the spew he taught her about the glories of monsters," she snorted, "even introduced her to the works of Alikavarnata Terphainitun. By the old crossroads, I even think her leaving with her boyfriend was just a ploy for her to go around and find a few of those monsters she's heard so much about." She chuckled, "though, I do hope she's taking the proper precautions not to get pregnant or converted…" she mumbled to herself, tilting her head to the side letting part of her red locks fall over the side of her face. Her blowing it away when it flew into her plump red lip.
'Right, so, now I know sex is really damn open here. But Liora gets flustered when calling her sexy,' a cruel, experimental look took to his expression. "Hey Liora," he grabbed her attention and locked it on him. "What about you? Have you ever wanted to have sex with a monster?"
A slight pink took to her cheeks though not overwhelmingly so. "Oh, uh, no, not really. I was raised under Artemia's teachings. So I've never really had much of an interest in such things, that was really more of a hobby from my husband and daughter than me." She pressed her hand onto her chest forming a slight indentation into her ample bosom.
"Then what about having s-" as he spoke, furious knocking noises came from the front door, quickly attracting Liora's attention as she rose up and said.
"Let me get that quickly." And slowly sauntered out the door leaving Noah to finish his sentence alone.
"-ex with another man… well that just broke the flow." He grumbled hearing the soft chattering of Liora speaking with another woman. This chatter soon halted and was followed by hastened stomps on a quick approach through the rackety hallways of the building to the dining room.
Liora appearing in the doorway, her face scarlet, her lips sucked in and what appeared to be anger on her face as she held in one trembling hand an unnervingly familiar wooden box. The identity of its contents soon recollected when behind Liora walked in the dirty blonde-haired girl of Caina. The very same girl he'd given a bedazzled dildo to as payment for healing Liora.
A bedazzled dildo that was now being slammed onto the table right in front of Noah. The box slowly opening to reveal the glistening object to him, Liora now looming over him speaking with a malevolent tone. "Of all the things you can give someone as payment, you give her my daughters sex toy?"
'Note to self. Sex, not wrong, sex toys, wrong.'