Chapter 82
Titania's face was glowing with excitement as I changed direction, and moved deeper into the base, but it lacked the manic obsessiveness I expected her to have. Just like her carnal joy, it was probably the first time she was enjoying the adrenaline rush of a battle without the effects of her emotional dampener, but she was already getting a hang of it.
I wasn't the only one that benefited from a high Wisdom score in decision-making, it seemed.
Unfortunately, we needed to avoid the gathering spot, no matter how good it felt for her to burn hordes of skeletons and zombies. A part of the reason was my mana, still regenerating, but a bigger part of it was the wards that were being activated. Ambushing a bunch of inexperienced necromancers was fun, but I didn't want to repeat it with the great wards backing them up.
So, instead of returning, I leveraged the benefits of my earth-elemental mount, and created a temporary underground tunnel. Their underground road was protected with wards, of course, but covering miles and miles of road perfectly was not an easy job. A simple application of my Arcana abilities was all it took to avoid their detection as we disappeared underground.
[+1 Arcana]
[-53 Mana]
Since it gave us a moment to rest, I let Titania sit while I stopped the movement of our mount, letting her catch her breath after her latest orgasm while I grabbed a chunk of stone, to test my newest skill. Crafting.
Crafting was a difficult skill to master, and since I was a beginner, it came with a very limited set of instinctual understanding. However, unlike my other skills, I had a great advantage. I had worked with Oeyne, a master of her craft, and it gave me a much greater understanding of the skill. Folding my mana several times around the piece of stone while using Earth Magic to sculpt it was almost trivial.
[-281 Mana]
[+4 Craft]
"Not bad," I murmured as I examined the stone dagger in my hands. From an objective assessment, it was nothing more than garbage, constructed from a material worse than garbage and carrying only one layer of enchantment, it was a total waste of mana.
Luckily, I had more than enough to waste it.
"What are you doing?" Titania asked as she realized we stopped. "We should hit them before they could react!"
"No," I answered even as I grabbed another piece of stone and repeated the earlier crafting activity, which worked quite a bit better due to increased familiarity. "It's better if we don't hit them immediately."
[-234 Mana]
[+3 Craft]
"Why?" she asked, her voice sharp, but even that was an incredible development with her famously dominant personality. The fact that she was asking me to explain angrily rather than trying to force me to speak was a huge development. Of course, compared to fact that she was sitting in front of me, wearing only a damaged skirt that didn't even cover her slit, her reduced aggressiveness wasn't even worth mentioning.
"I want them to start searching the intruders," I explained. "Once they are committed to it, they'll have many strong necromancers, maybe even some of the liches, away from each other, making them easy pickings. Hunting their strongest members will work much better than otherwise. Even better, after your display, they are likely to assume that you're pushed to your limits, meaning they'll prioritize speed over safety"
[+1 Speech]
She nodded, approving my strategy, before her eyes landed on my hand. "Why are you wasting your mana like this?" she asked.
"Why? Do you want me to give you some more 'mana' instead?" I said with a naughty smirk.
Her blush was spectacular. "You dog," she murmured, avoiding my gaze as she tried to process it, wrapping her arms around her chest.
I just chuckled before explaining. "I just received an inspiration on crafting, and want to try a new production method," I explained.
"You can craft as well?" she asked, shocked. "What you can't do?"
"I can do many things, including you," I quipped, this time earning a slap on the shoulder rather than a shy avoidance. I just smirked as I grabbed another piece of stone, this time fashioning them into stone handcuffs, adding a simple suppression effect to them.
[-467 Mana]
[+5 Craft]
"Careful," I warned. "Or I would tie you up to make sure you don't get naughty while transferring mana."
"You wouldn't dare," she challenged, which was all I needed to dash forward and grab her arms. Before she could even react, I pulled both of her arms behind her, and locked them with the handcuffs. "No," she said. "Stop."
"Do you really want me to stop?" I said as I pulled her on her feet, and slipped my fingers into her slit, which was getting wetter at a noticeable pace. "Your body doesn't agree. Instead, it reacts like you want another dash of my ... mana. Am I wrong?"
She didn't answer at first, so I started pumping my fingers, trying to force her to answer. When that failed, I decided to employ my new crafting abilities to the limit. I grabbed another piece of stone, and started crafting another item, a cylindrical one that resembled my shaft, only shorter and thinner. Unlike the daggers, I invested quite a bit of mana on its crafting, and made sure it had several spells integrated into its nature semi-permanently, including the ability to vanish waste and constant lubrication.
[-1139 Mana]
[+13 Craft]
For anyone else, it was nothing more than a total waste of mana, but for me, it was valuable above and beyond my improvement with the magic. It was a toy that would allow me to teach Titania a pleasurable lesson.
She gasped when I pressed the newly-crafted stone anal plug against her puckered hole. "What's that," she gasped.
"Your punishment for talking back to your betters," I said, even as I used my free hand to pull one of her ass cheeks to the side, giving me a better view of her rosebud, small and tight, waiting to be broken in.
"I'll kill you," she said, her earlier submissiveness disappearing as the plug threatened to invade her alternative entrance. However, when I pushed my shaft against her entrance, the head dipping into her wetness, her struggling ceased quickly.
"Really," I said, even as I pushed the plug slightly deeper, earning a hiss. "Come on, Titania. You're a big girl," I said as I slapped her ass with my free hand, staining her alabaster skin. "You can handle a little pain."
She might have tried to refute my words, but when I pushed the plug even deeper, she prioritized gasping in shock, which followed by a moan of pleasure as I slipped the plug completely into her entrance, relying on the enchantments to prevent an injury, but that didn't reduce the pain the slightest. Simultaneously, I slammed my shaft into her soft entrance, making her reaction even more spectacular. Even better, I received a very welcome notification.
[Companion Acquisition: Progress 52%]
[+2000 Experience]
Level UP!
[Select one of the following skills: Grandmaster Tantric (5), Grandmaster Elemental (5), Advanced Craft]
The skill selection was a foregone decision. I quickly picked Craft once more while I spanked her ass. "Someone is enjoying being plugged in the ass," I commented cheerfully as I grabbed her handcuffed wrists before starting impaling her mercilessly.
"N-no," she moaned, but it was impossible to hide the pleasure echoing in her tone as her two holes were teased simultaneously.
"Really?" I said, and pulled back the plug, only for her to let out a disappointed gasp, clearly not expecting me to follow up my offer. Luckily for her, she was correct on that account. "So, you don't want me to do this," I said as I replaced the plug with my shaft, the tip sinking slowly into her lithe ass. She was not a rival of Marianne in the hips department, but her tight ass had its own taste.
She just moaned as I sank into her ass inch by inch, objections suspiciously absent as I forced her tightness to expand. I pulled out once I reached halfway, only to slam into her pussy once more, dumping a generous dash of mana, once again feeling the fullness of her reserves while mine dipped down dangerously low. Luckily, with four instances active, I barely needed ten minutes to fill completely again.
[-1381 Mana]
[Companion Acquisition: Progress 54%]
[+2000 Experience]
"You're a monster," she moaned, but when she twisted her neck to catch my gaze, anger was suspiciously absent. Instead, she nibbled her lower lip, giving me a sexy glare that shouldn't be possible for her, but somehow working perfectly, begging me to move faster.
And I did so. I launched an assault, alternating between her holes as I wreaked havoc, pulling her arms back hard, slapping her ass repeatedly. And she was clearly enjoying the rougher treatment. "You like this, don't you," I murmured even as I cast an earth spell, and created chains to lock her legs, though, unlike her handcuffs, they were simple spells rather than true magical items, meaning they wouldn't last.
She didn't say anything else, but the way she tightened further was sufficient as an answer. What were the chances that the feared Titania enjoyed bondage? It wasn't even like Cornelia, a submissive that bowed down to a stronger person. For Cornelia, it was about the power, but for Titania, it was clearly different.
I grabbed yet another piece of stone, quickly crafting it into a collar, connected to a chain. It was exactly what I needed to test Titania's limits. I even etched a magic-blocking ward on it as well, one that would only hold if Titania didn't stretch her powers, of course. With her magical abilities, truly cutting her off her magic was an almost impossible task without the help of extremely strong arrays, well-above anything I could craft on the fly.
[-559 Mana]
[+6 Craft]
She stiffened when she felt the stone collar on her neck, making me wonder whether I had finally pushed her too hard, but that concern didn't last long, not when she suddenly started cumming, more explosive than I had ever seen her do before.
[Companion Acquisition: Progress 61%]
[+2000 Experience]
[Achievement: Spotting Secrets. Help a paramour discover their true selves. +3 Wisdom. +1000 Exp]
I held her arms to prevent her from hitting on the floor painfully, instead helped her to sit. I even opened the handcuffs, but kept the collar on, which looked extremely beautiful in combination with her ripped skirt and used appearance. While she rested her back against the stone wall, trying to recover from the extreme high she had just experienced, I stayed on my feet, occasionally using weak Biomancy pulses to check our surroundings while I recovered my mana.
About fifteen minutes later, my mana was completely full, but she was still resting against the wall, her eyes still closed. "Are you ready to act?" I asked.
"M-maybe," she stammered, cracking her eyes open. "I can still feel my legs trembling..."
"Yeah," I murmured even as I leaned for a quick kiss, and after that, tugged her chain. "You have enjoyed the collar more than I expected."
"But why?" she said, unable to hide her shame. "Isn't it wrong to enjoy something like that? Like I was some kind of slave..."
"Not necessarily," I said as I sat next to her, delaying the assault another couple of minutes. "What you enjoy during sex doesn't necessarily have to be what you do in your daily life. Maybe that was what you needed, a contrast to your strict life, where you do nothing but missions or managing the library, forcing you to be always on command. You were always so stiff before we truly met, after all."
"Do you think it's permanent?" she questioned even as she dragged her fingers over her collar.
"Maybe, maybe not?" I said, caressing her raven hair. "The important question is, why do you care. We can always stop if you stop enjoying it," I offered, then smiled mischievously. "And I promise I'll forge you a much better collar if you continue to enjoy it," I offered.
"You bastard!" she exclaimed, hitting playfully, but her wide smile was enough to tell her true feelings.
I sighed. "As much as I enjoy spending time with you, we need to move," I murmured, and cast telekinesis on her robe, bringing it to us. "Put it on, and we can move again," I suggested. She looked at her robe with no small amount of disappointment. "I know, but unlike before, we're going to hunt strong magic users rather than mindless hordes. Our attack-defend combo is not guaranteed to work. There's no guarantee that they can't split us temporarily by attacking from multiple directions, and leaving you defenseless is not a risk I'm willing to take."
"Okay," she murmured mulishly, but her blush signaled that she enjoyed the attention. While she got dressed with her battle gear, I made the elemental mount move again.
Destination, their meeting area...
[Level: 30 Experience: 439500 / 465000
Strength: 36 Charisma: 51
Precision: 33 Perception: 35
Agility: 33 Manipulation: 38
Speed: 32 Intelligence: 42
Endurance: 30 Wisdom: 44
HP: 4920 / 4920 Mana: 6300 / 6300 ]
SKILLS
Master Melee [100/100]
Master Tantric [100/100]
Master Biomancy [100/100]
Master Elemental [100/100]
Master Subterfuge [95/100]
Master Arcana [87/100]
Expert Speech [63/75]
Advanced Craft [31/50]
PERKS
Mana Regeneration
Skill Share
Empowerment (1/1)
Teleportation
COMPANIONS
[Cornelia - Level 17/25]
[Helga - Level 13/17]