"Sure, I can fight," Devon replied with a groan, getting up to his feet from the medical bed and exiting the medical tent alongside Vesta into the village. The female villagers were all busy doing their own thing and carrying on with business as usual, but Devon saw that some of them still had the tell-tale black pigmented powder clinging onto their skin. The ones that had the pigment professionally applied looked formidable and aesthetic, and the ones that had their pigment applied by Devon… well, suffice to say that it was avante garde at best.
The powder was more durable than Devon first thought, being able to retain itself even after a washing with cold water. It would probably stay for a few days to a week before dissolving.
The villagers seemed to be in a bit of a panic about the absence of the dwarves. Devon caught a villager staring at him. It was the coconut chested Alina from last night, who gave him a sly wink and a small kissy motion with her lips before carrying on with her business.
"The dwarves never leave without telling us about it," Vesta explained. "And here, look at this!"
The busty honey-kissed tribal healer pointed towards a bunch of skid marks leading away from the side of the village.
One of the female guards from last night approached and spoke. "It was jaguars. By the looks of things, they snagged one of the dwarves and dragged them off in the dead of the night. The dwarves camp to the outskirts of our village, so it was unfortunate but expected that we did not hear the commotion"
Devon interjected with a question. "So the dwarves went to save their friend, ma'am?"
"Yes. That's what we surmised."
Vesta clicked her tongue. "Tsk tsk. They should've known better than to wander off into the jungle on their own. The dwarves were always so confident in their contraptions and gadgets being able to save them from any danger, but they don't know anything about the dangers of the jungle."
Devon reminisced on the war machines and portable net turrets that the dwarven convoy deployed during their initial bout with the jaguars. With sophisticated machinery like that, no wonder they felt confident venturing into the jungle on their own.
"I will rouse the warriors. We leave at noon," said the female guard.
Vesta nodded. "Lets go with them at that time, okay Devon?"
"Alright."
They went to prepare their things, as Devon readied his moonlight steel sword attached to the pommel of the Mjolnir. He felt a bit like a badass now, having collected so much combat experience over the last week and a half going from battlefield to battlefield. Just a little while ago, he couldn't even imagine choosing a combat mission from the guild backrooms.
He made sure to refill his waterskin and take a quick rinse in the stream, and also ate some nuts and berries and poached meats that Vesta offered to him. The food was quite good, and it sure as hell beat starving and dying of thirst back in that dust storm.
As Devon walked across the village to the hut where he was supposed to meet the expedition party, he happened across the female teenage villager with the unbelievably tight body from last night. Smiling as he crossed her path, she raised her fist to her mouth and made a lewd sucking motion with her tongue in her cheek.
Devon was caught by surprise by the lewd act and didn't know how to react.
It was noon after a little while of preparation.
"Let's depart!" the female guard leading the expedition said.
The expedition left the village swiftly, as Devon had to jog to keep up pace with the tribal warriors of the amazons. But the sight of so many beauties shaking their asses and bouncing their boobs while running was quite the sight, and Devon suddenly did not regret lagging behind in jogging pace from the expedition. If he hadn't completely emptied his nutsack last night, he'd have gotten a chub by now seeing this display.
They followed the obvious trail of the dwarven war convoy, observing the wheel marks in the ground from all the net turrets and other transactions that they lugged along with them.
After an hour of tracking, they finally caught up to the end of the trail. The tracks led straight into a massive cave opening. The opening was so large that it was more of an open-air lair than some kind of claustrophobic cave that one would imagine. Diligent as ever, the dwarves left torches at the sides of the cave illuminating the way forward.
The expedition came to a halt in front of the cave, and Devon couldn't quite hit the brakes in time. He collided with the bust tribal warrior right in front of him, his hips landing smack on her ass as he grabbed in front of him for stability, but ended up just grabbing her hips and squishing them rather lewdly.