The fire crackles softly, reflecting off the water and the stalactites in the ceiling. Her body is curled up in his arms, wrapped within one of his robes, forehead nuzzled into his chest.

She fits perfectly.

In the light of the fire, her hair has taken on a soft golden hue. She stirs awake slowly, blinking two bleary emerald eyes upon him. The moistness of her eyes make them sparkle like jewels.

“Good evening,” he whispers sweetly.

Her fingers, which were a purple-blue, have started to return to colour. She rubs them over her eyes, stifling a yawn.

“I don’t think I ever caught your name.”

She picks at the ripped dress, then removes a sewing kit from her bag. “Ellya,” she says after a moment, slipping the needle through the gap. “That’s my name.”

Not any essential NPC that he recognizes. Good. “You reacted pretty quick back there. How did you know the Lancuss were there?”

“How did you find this cave so quickly?”

“Because I’m a hero.”

She tilts her head in question. He scratches her ears. She tilts into the scratch, nuzzling his hand before returning her gaze to his.

“I’m from another world. There was a game that I used to play which resembled this one.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. The similarities are quite uncanny. It’s how I was able to level up so easily.”

It is fascinating how her attention is solely on him, her emerald orbs drawing him in. With Ambrie, the interest is manufactured – false. With the women who throw themselves at him, it’s always a means to an end. A good and happy end, but a means none-the-less. This is the first he’s ever had of someone who just genuinely wants to hear what he has to say.

He wants her.

“Do you wish to return?” she asks suddenly.

“…What?”

“Your world. Do you wish to return to it?”

He pauses for a moment, stunned. Not even Yuki or Arty have bothered to ask that question. And Ambrie won’t say a word on his life from Earth, even as courtesy. It doesn’t suit her objectives to bring it up.

“Eventually,” he admits slowly. He holds her close against his chest, tracing his fingers absently along her arm. “This kind of situation has always been a dream, you know? I’d be crazy to miss this chance.”

She returns her attention to stitching up her dress. He watches her quietly, listening to the fire. The ends of her hair are jagged. He follows the cut.

“Did something happen?”

She flushes, embarrassed. “My last job was in the Corrupted Lands…” she volunteers after a moment. “I haven’t had a chance to fix it yet.”

The Corrupted Lands. Not part of the main plot until later in the game, so he hasn’t bothered with them yet. Yuki mentioned taking a jab at it earlier in the week. Does that mean her assignment was with him? He didn’t tap her, did he?

A flash of jealousy flares up. He startles, surprised, and forcibly relaxes his grip.

She cocks her head. He clears his throat, collecting himself.

“That place is pretty bad. You went by yourself?”

A slight shake of her head.

“What happened that you had to chop your hair off?” He tries to keep his voice casual. Calm.

She bites her lip, shaking her head. Interrupting his fantasies of Yuki and her dogging it out, she starts her explanation haltingly. “There was… a… well, a miscalculation.”

“A miscalculation?”

She shakes her head. “I cannot share personal information.”

“Did he do something to you?”

She shakes her head, but a fang chews on her lip. That bastard better not have touched it. He chattered on at length about his persona being the cool but detached guy. But, when a woman’s so defenseless…

“I bet it was very pretty. It still is.”

A soft blush. Will this desire disappear after a taste? Or will she be the one to disappear instead?

She changes the topic. “Did you absorb the horns?”

The Lancuss. “Yeah.”

“What happens to them? Once they’re absorbed?”

He shakes his head. Her eyes are glittering. Sparkling. “From what I understand, the bodies are converted into various kinds of tokens, which are used to unlock different branches of my skills. My power set is structured as a skill tree, with each path unlocked by obtaining a select number of certain tokens. Occasionally, I’ll come across a monster whose skins I can collect, but I can’t actually obtain the skill associated with it until I unlock the rest of the path leading to that branch.”

“A… token…?”

“Right. Those don’t exist in this world. Think of a coin. But instead of being able to purchase goods, you can only use it on spells.”

She knits her brows together. “I don’t think anyone in the kingdom uses magic like you do.”

“I am a Hero, after all. It was like that for my game, too. Certain requirements were such a hassle to unlock. I’ll need to collect a lot more before I can obtain the Nullify spell those Lancuss provide.”

“The Lancuss are dangerous. It would be better to avoid their detection.”

“I can handle them.”

She finishes up her sewing and puts away the kit. Her skin is much warmer now, but he feels cold when she stands up. She picks up her staff, bracing herself to cast a spell.

“No need for that.”

She cocks her head.

“There’s… uhh… there’s a path that will take us back to the others,” he stammers out slowly. It’s not a lie, but the path is inefficient compared to just swimming. “You should conserve your magic.”

She nods, slotting her staff into its sheath at her hip. Reaching into her bag, she removes a short sword, similar to a scimitar, and straps it to her belt opposite the staff. She tests a draw, then slips the sword back into her belt.

The Adventurer’s Guild never said a word about close combat capabilities.

He walks her down the passageways, stepping past the corpses of the monsters from his farming earlier. She awards each a passing glance, slight furrow to her brow.

“Is there a problem?”

She purses her lips together. “You harvested the claws and the fangs, but other parts have value too. The organs can be dried and ground down for medicine. The fur gets sewn into armour.”

“And?”

“It’s easy money for an adventurer.”

“I’m a Hero. The kingdom pays me.”

The Empty King was bluffing. Obviously he doesn’t have the authority to actually take away his reward.

 She averts her head back to the monster, chewing on her lip with a fang. Back to being useless, it seems.

He ruffles her hair, petting and scratching her ears. She leans into it. “When you’re a hero, every second counts,” he explains slowly. Women don’t like feeling demeaned. Its frustrating to refrain when every question starts with why. “The monsters will fade on their own if we leave them. Or another adventurer will come along and harvest them.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Are you questioning me?”

“…No.”

“Good. Let’s continue.”

This time, she follows obediently, tail tucked between her legs. NPCs have always been useless. But for the past while they’ve been especially cumbersome. They talk back, abandon the party at will, stray off on their own… just refuse to perform as coded.

“What is that?”

He follows her direction to a glimmer suspended in a waterfall above their heads. That’s the secret loot obtainable after the boss dungeon. The metal of the rim sparkles in the faint illumination of the cave network, nearly indistinguishable.

Good eyes.

“Can you reach it?”

It’ll be amusing to watch her struggle.

She steps to the edge of the passageway, grounds her feet, and concentrates. The fringes of the waterfall spatter her chest and body, but she pays it no mind, instead muttering the words of a spell to herself alongside the swish of her staff. Drops of water fleck off from the falling mass and coalesce into a small bird that swoops up and through the stream of water. After a moment, it re-emerges with the goblet grasped between watery talons.

The bird fumbles at the landing. Bryant lurches forward and wraps her around the waist. Driving his sword into the rock behind the waterfall to slow their seventeen-floor drop to the pool beneath, she manages to bless them both with a tail just before submersion.

He drags her up and out of the water onto rock. One hand clasps the goblet. The other is vacant. They are both soaked through, her hair and emerald eyes absolutely enticing. Chest rises and falls with each breath.

He grabs the goblet and admires it. Shoulders quivering. Beholding the very item he’d forged into this stupid dungeon for… He has to laugh at the sheer simplicity of it all.

He adds the goblet to his inventory. She wiggles onto her elbows, pushing her chest and lips up. He smacks her down with a tackle, planting a kiss square over them. She melts into it, granting him access to snake his tongue around the inside of her mouth. Her saliva is sweet, the pointy canines fascinating to navigate.

Delicious.

A string of saliva links the path between both of their lips when he parts for breath. It snaps. Her body is beneath his, her emerald eyes drawing him in. His fingers play with the laces of her leather armour.

“Can I?”

She holds her breath an agonizing moment. A soft nod.

The laces come undone.

He devoures his fill in full, and a little more, before leaving the exhausted Ellya to sleep. In the glow of satisfaction, a nugget of panic slowly wiggles free.

Shit.

Ambrie’s gonna freak.

Dunking his body into the water, he scrubs off the scent of the mage. His pants are fine, but the shirt is beyond salvage. Constructing a fire, he burns the shirt, and the robe from earlier. Expensive, but not worth the wrath of a dagger through the stomach.

The wench will have to dive under water to find her staff. That should take care of some of the scent. The rest he can bluff off with his heroics.

A low growl stiffens his back. He scrambles for his sword and rips it from the scabbard. Griqpa, hulking and glowering, lumbers into the alcove and raises its haunches. It locks eyes with Bryant and lets out a roar.

Status Effect: All Stats Down 50%

Not good.

Not good–Not good–Not good.

Bucket mage rouses from her sleep and blinks blearily at the monster. He kicks her clothes at her, attention hyper-fixated on the bear. “Get dressed. Find your staff.”

She fumbles her clothes over her head. He slashes at the Griqpa; not even a scratch. Kay, then how about that new technique from the Quirrill needles?

Form Change: Rapier Mode. “Sunder.”

The blade guides his hand to the shoulder, abdomen, elbow. A splash of water behind him. The Griqpa staggers back.

That did something.

Cooldown. Fuck.

Changing the form again to broadsword, he continues the struggle against the monster. Suddenly, the Griqpa stiffens. A line of red sprouts across its throat. A sickly squelch. The head peels off.

A chill to the bone.

“There you are, Darling!” the crazy bitch chirps dazzlingly. Her smile is full teeth. Curled silver-white hair doused in blood.

He has to struggle not to brandish the sword against her.

“Hey…” he drawls. Clears his throat. “I’m glad we found you.”

“We?”

Her teeth are still smiling. The back of his neck, where he was stabbed in his own world, tingles. “Yeah. I had to drag the bucket along; kept slowing us down.”

Her eyes scan over the pool. “Seems she drowned. Lucky.”

Shit.

He shoves the sword into the scabbard, turns, and dives. Ambrie lets out a shrill screech, but her words are silenced by the water. It takes a moment to center his bearings. A line of blood strays from a hidden tunnel.

A new route?

Whirlpools dance around the girl. The scimitar is in both hands, deflecting a horn as she smacks another aside with her tail. Her staff is in splinters. Her body peppered with slashes and cuts. One eye is squinted shut and bloodied. The other widens upon glimpsing him.

He doesn’t hear what she says, but suddenly he’s knocked back several feet. A Lancuss stabs her in the gut and tears. She grimaces in pain, removes a hand from the blade of her scimitar, and snaps the horn from the Lancuss with her palm. It wails in pain, vibrating the entire tunnel.

Don’t come closer! Her words are in his head now. Echoey and ripply. They’re after your sword.

And? What does he care; he can handle them.

They fed off my staff. They’re stronger now.

Since when does a hired hand decide what he is capable of? Since when can a mage cast spells without a staff? This better not be some damned DLC content.

Planting his feet on the stone of the tunnel, he grabs his sword. Six Lancuss. Paired with the four he slayed earlier, nearly the entire spawn potential for the dungeon.

A pretty damn lucky coincidence.

It’s still in rapier mode. He drives it into a crack in the stone, clutching the hilt with both hands. “Rupture.”

The crack widens, threading a crooked path all the way to the monsters. The tunnel quivers, shaking and dislodging stalactite, rocks, and dust. A huge groan. The entire framework collapses.

One of her arms has escaped the collapse, the Lancuss horn gripped tight within. He pries it from her grip, returns to shore, and clambers out of the water.

Ambrie is rifling through the mage’s satchel and tossing crap at random into the fire. “Came to your senses?”

“Yeah.”

He snatches the beaded necklace from her hand and appraises it. So, the bitch had one final use. He breaks the clasp and distributes the beads to the rest of the party, popping his down his throat like a hard pill.

Water Breathing: Three Hours

“We’re leaving.”

“And the whore?”

He stops, adjusts his braces, and glowers. The last breath he’ll waste on the useless wench is a singular word:

“Dead.”

Ambrie glows. The other three exchange an uneasy glance. Fuck them anyways; they aren’t staying.

The Adventurer’s Guild had spouted a lot of nonsense about that useless dredge. The only one capable of water-breathing? Please. He can train an army in his sleep. Whatever it takes to shove the guild off his back.

DLC content or no, the bitch had to go. Whatever it takes, he will win this game. Like hell he’s ruining his perfect record.