If there's one thing I've learned since I came to Xianxialand through the traditional immigration process of my homeland, it is one thing above all others, one upon which I stake my creed, my ethos, what may be the foundation of my very dao.
This profound truth? This thing that I can, at this very moment, feel down to my very bones?
Explosions are bad.
Which, to a former NEET who was straight-up addicted to watching shows or playing games that prominently featured pyrotechnics often clad in the Power of Friendship, it cuts like sharp betrayal.
Oh, yeah, I can hear the counterarguments already: 'Explosions are bad? What about the Spirit Bomb, then? That is, by definition, a bomb made out of goodness.'
Clever. An erudite rebuttal grounded in the very foundations of my culture and upbringing.
Nonetheless, I have my own rebuttal:
"Megumiiiiiiiiin!"
Yes, that is my rebuttal. Also, my oft-repeated scream of agony when one of her blasted (literally and figuratively) techniques yet again results in more friendly fire than if I was a reporter covering an inconvenient humanitarian crisis.
"C—c—c—c—co—" the Mistress of the Crimson Blaze says from somewhere beyond the cloud of dust wafting along our former living room.
A piece of the rafters crashes down between us, displaced air clearing out pulverized plaster, and I see the lone, visible red eye of the chuuni widening in alarm as she looks at—
…
Why the Hell am I still erect?!
"Cock!" she finally yells, sparks of color gathering around her pointing finger in a way that does not assuage my immediate concerns, even if a distant, deranged part of me is helpfully noting that, were she to actually hit me right in my exposed manhood, that would be grounds for correction.
… Once again, it is my dearest, fondest wish that my computer was turned to ashes in a freak housefire. I shall even allow an explosion, in this particular instance.
"Stop!" Darkness, ever stalwart, says, jumping in front of the burgeoning attack with her arms extended in a flawless Piccolo pose that she has perfected again and again in her pursuit of ensuring the safety of her companions, which she does for noble and altruistic reasons and not because she gets off on it.
Really.
I'm not crying. It's just all the dust of my wrecked living room getting in my eyes.
"But! Kazuma! Cock! Demon cock!" Megumin says, slightly more coherent than usual.
"Stop exploding our house before I tear your dantian asunder, you lowly witch!" Aqua says, for once agreeing with my unstated thoughts. Which may be because I have not stated them.
I am in the middle of the heart-wrenching dilemma of whether or not to audibly agree with the fallen immortal before I notice something. Or, rather, the absence of something, which is an interesting philosophical conundrum upon which I'm sure there's an entire skill tree of techniques lying in wait to be discovered, but I have even more pressing concerns in my mind than my ruined living room, my exposed, erect member, or even the terrifying possibility of me agreeing with Aqua and how much Megumin-inflicted cranial trauma has to do with that unlikely state of affairs.
Namely, where is the Imperial Inquisitor who just barged in?
"Sena?" I ask, not loud enough that she can locate me through the cloud of dust.
I hope.
I mean, cultivators are weird at the best of times, and she's basically an agent of the law. It wouldn't be strange for her to follow the Dao of the Bat, but I haven't seen her carrying around a belt full of mysteriously convenient paraphernalia.
She sometimes pulls things from her cleavage, though. Maybe that counts?
"Sena?" Darkness mirrors my question, turning to look at me over her shoulder and going about as crimson as Megumin's blaze when her eyes follow down the line of my open robes exposing a healthily green body until they fall upon the thing sticking out of my torn pants.
Note to self: commission clothing made out of spirit spider silk, hell tarantula silk, or whatever the Hell the nutjob trying to pass herself off as a competent alchemist thinks would be able to withstand my erections after she's had time to get acquainted with…
…
Okay. No. Stop thinking about your cock, Kazuma, and focus on the one thing that matters: the very likely chance that you're going to get both murdered and executed by an agent of the Emperor's authority who's already had a few excuses to do so already. It is a miracle she hasn't taken any of them, particularly with how much pressure I know she's been put through since the fiasco of Darkness' wedding, so it may be in your best interests not to keep poking that particular bear.
You know, the bear whose house you Megumined yesterday. And whose smut addiction you discovered. And then had the fantastic idea of pointing it out to her.
… I don't want to die a virgin—
'I… Just… Hold on a bit longer,' Darkness says, her cheeks dusted with pink, her eyes glazed with raw need, her soft breasts pushing around my shaft as my tip reflects flickering candleflame over the traces of her saliva—
…
Okay, I don't want to die a technical virgin. Is that fair? Is that a thought I am allowed to have without any more of your meddling, Subconscious Kazuma? Can I think and plan without you trying to turn into a lust-focused heart demon, which I sure as Hell don't want to be a thing, given the whole Vanir—
"Found her," Aqua says from… somewhere beyond a swirling cloud of plaster that should have already settled down, unless Megumin's latest exploit somehow interfered with the house's formations, which is something I really, really hope is not a thing. I wish it enough that I wouldn't mind a heart demon forming out of it, so long as she wore a maid's uniform and cleared out all this dust.
"Alive?" I can't help but morbidly ask.
"I mean… unless you want to get rid of a witness to an attempt on an inquisitor's life?" the blue-haired woman born on a higher plane of existence predicated on the transcendence of our limited perspective of the cosmos says.
Sometimes, I wonder why she took so long to fall.
"Aqua… killing someone so they can't be a witness to attempted murder is the kind of slippery slope that ends in genocide," I try to explain to her as I carefully navigate the wrecked room and only stub my toe once on what feels like a particularly solid piece of ceiling.
"You're finally getting in the spirit of how things work around here!" she says with a tone that could be sarcasm, if I was feeling generous enough.
"We're not killing Sena."
"Relax, she'll just reincarnate. It's not like she'll get sent to another world or something ludicrous like that—"
"You're just trying to piss me off."
"Gee, I wonder what gave me aw—aaaaah!"
So.
Low visibility.
A cock ever so slightly longer than usual.
Aqua bent over a fallen inquisitor.
A mysterious, warm softness pressing against the tip of my dick.
…
Nope. I'm coming up empty. There's nothing that all these random facts add up to.
Absolutely nothing. At all.
"Kazuma! You beast!" Darkness, scandalized, calls out while covering her face with both hands leaving only a few suspicious gaps between her fingers that show both keen attention and a pleased flush. "You would dare defile one of our dearest companions right in front of the rest of us, taking her from behind like a lustful animal until Aqua's dignity is torn to shreds and she can't help but lose herself around your pillar of flesh—"
"She's Aqua! Aqua! She didn't have any dignity to shred to begin with!"
"I'll turn you into a eunuch, you worthless NEET!"
"See? Straight to threats of castration! No hint of banter or wit to be found! I cannot defile what's already—Aqua? My dearest companion? Friend through many hardships? Why are you pressing your finger against an undisclosed point along the line of my ribcage?"
Blue eyes no longer hidden behind clouds of plaster look up at me, narrowed by a smile that looks about as sincere as the glint of dusk on a dagger's edge.
… Note to self: I should return Chris' panties at some point.
"Oh, it's nothing, my dear Kazuma. I just decided to help you show how cutely bashful you're being when you insult me rather than praise me as the exalted beauty that I am."
"… And what form shall this help take?"
"I am merely doing what comes naturally: taking your breath away."
My eyes shoot wide open as her smile turns into a snarl, and the point of her finger sinks ever so slightly into my flesh as it twists.
For a single moment, I can feel my lungs as clearly as Aqua's lessons told me I should aspire to. Every wrinkle of flesh, every pulsing blood vessel. Every single thing inside my chest, in perfectly vivid detail.
And then, with all this flawless clarity, I am an impotent witness to how each of the air sacs lining the inside of my lungs closes down.
I gasp, trying to force air inside my chest, but the issue is that the air itself does nothing once there, and I'm already feeling lightheaded when I stumble back and away from the woman who took to heart the one speech I gave to a persistent 'suitor' of hers concerning why you never should mess with the party healer.
The dusty floor rushes to meet me, distant pain blossoming in the back of my skull.
It is with a thorough lack of surprise that I notice that, through all this, my cock is still hard.
Darkness' worried face hanging over me does nothing to change that state of affairs.
"Kazuma!" she yells, dropping to her knees, pressing her hands on my chest and doing something that I assume she thinks is a good idea, which fills my remaining mental resources with sheer terror.
"Aqua!" Megumin yells, finally joining our little meeting and only looking worriedly at my shaft once before focusing her colorful sparkles on the disinterested, blue-themed sadist.
Shut up, Subconscious Kazuma. I shall only allow you to clad Aqua in black leather if she's to feature in a domination loss scenario. And I shall only allow any fantasy regarding an Aqua scenario because the lack of oxygen is making me lightheaded enough that inhibitions are flying out the window and I don't have the fortitude to deal with both denial and repression.
"He's being dramatic," she shrugs.
"You've cut off his breathing!" Darkness says, correctly diagnosing me through the power of being a body cultivator who actually knows more about anatomy than the average dropout from high school whose lessons on the subject were mostly predicated on hentai's teachings.
"Well, yes. Best way to shut him up I've found. You're welcome, by the way."
"He needs to breathe to live!"
"Calm down, the point's effects will wear off in a few minutes—"
"He will die in seconds!" Megumin says, grabbing the front of Aqua's clothes with a hand sparkling hard enough that some smoke rises from the blue gauze.
"What are you talking about—"
"Mortal! He's mortal!" Darkness insultingly points out.
Aqua turns to look at me lying down, her eyes blinking a couple of times in distant incomprehension before teal eyebrows shoot up in alarm and, suddenly, there's a short, curvy girl straddling my abdomen, her fingers trailing along the curve of my ribcage, lightly prodding and caressing until easy warmth floods my chest and I take a gulp of sweet, life-giving air that I shall never again take for granted.
Of course, that means that I inhale a lot of plaster dust.
Which makes me sneeze.
Quite violently. Violently enough that I sit up.
Something that makes Aqua fall on my lap. Which is more or less where my still erect cock is placed.
Two hemispheres that rival in softness Darkness' other hemispheres are wrapped around my shaft, only the layers of light gauze of the fallen immortal's robes separating me from flawless, pale skin that I've accidentally glimpsed enough times that Subconscious Kazuma is now working overtime to supply me with a clear mental image of how I am currently hotdogging a woman who almost killed me by accident mere seconds ago.
Subconscious Kazuma seems to be a fan of both the 'correction' and 'domination loss' tags.
I can't fault his impeccable taste.
"Aqua?" I growl.
"Yes, Kazuma? My loyal companion? My fated pupil—"
"Have you ever heard about what a hatefuck is?"
"Try it and see what happens, NEET."
"Apologize! At least apologize before I'm forced to unleash my wrath on your—"
Somebody clears her throat.
Turning my head away from challenging blue eyes has me meeting reproachful, equally blue yet darker eyes that narrow ever closer the more time my cock remains lodged between Aqua's cheeks without anyone doing anything to change that regrettable state of affairs.
"I can explain," I begin, like a moron.
"We should take care of Sena," she says.
I blink at her, look down at where Aqua doesn't seem to be uncomfortably seated, and back at Darkness.
"I mean, I know that the morals of this realm are somewhat looser when it comes to toads devouring swan meat and all that stuff, but I really wouldn't feel comfortable blackmailing Sena with sexual acts performed on her while she was unconscious—"
There's a fist flying toward my face.
This, after two years of Pavlovian conditioning, results in me throwing my head back and kicking my legs up to roll to my feet so I can at least run away with proper form.
Sadly, those carefully cultivated reflexes weren't put to the test with a woman sitting on my cock.
This, for reasons easy to imagine for anyone who's had the displeasure to attempt abrupt maneuvering while handling delicate equipment, results in my attempted roll turning into once again falling on my back, Aqua dropping on my chest, a feminine yelp that is enticing enough that it couldn't have come from Aqua, and a sudden push of my cock against soft flesh that stops being pleasant when the attached hips brusquely twist to the side.
"Can you three stop messing around while we have an unconscious Sena to deal with?" Megumin darkly mutters from somewhere past my feet, futilely trying to sound like the voice of reason.
"—" I answer with what remains of my voice.
"Oh, poor Kazuma… Does it hurt? Do you want me to kiss it and make it better?" Aqua cruelly whispers into my ear, her hot breath and purred tone, along with the feeling of her breasts rubbing up my chest, sending a jolt of renewed blood along something that is very much not in a state to grow any harder, particularly while trapped between silky thighs tightly pressed around every beat of my cock.
Darkness, for mysterious reasons, sees that as her clue to grab a yelping Aqua by the scruff of her nape and lift her up singlehandedly, the slender girl kicking her almost bare legs over my aching shaft in a display of futile resistance.
…
I wish this didn't look as hot as Subconscious Kazuma thinks it does. Also, I probably should stop assigning agency to parts of myself before another Vanir—
"At least cover yourself!" Megumin protests.
"My pants are ripped! It's not my fault!"
"Nothing ever is, is it?"
"And what's that supposed to mean?"
"Oh, you tell me, Mister 'Your mother locked the door from the outside—'"
"That wasn't my fault. That was an uncomfortable set of random circumstances—"
"You snuck into my bed!" a stomping, pointing girl accuses.
"You were pretending to be asleep—I mean, the room was freezing and I just wanted to avoid death by hypothermia, which all of the material I consumed regarding that particular condition back in Japan tells me is best done by sharing body heat with a girl who is trying very hard to look like she's not enjoying the—"
"I wasn't! I wasn't enjoying it!"
"Right. Of course, I believe you. That is, in fact, a regrettable state of affairs, given how set you were on becoming my 'cruel and terrible queen' just yesterday," I say with final aplomb, crossing my arms over my chest and grinning triumphantly Megumin's way with the self-assuredness of an indisputable, undefeated, debate champion that is only slightly diminished by the fact that I'm still lying on the rubble-strewn floor of my former living room.
Also, by the kick I get to my chin.
"Your queen?" Darkness, eyes set in a severe frown, still handling her dangling weapon in the form of a pouting Aqua with a leg that remains skirt-raisingly extended after her utterly unwarranted attack, says.
"I can explain," I yet again say because, apparently, I'm no longer tempting fate, but sending it anonymous letters with handmade cookies which may or not contain strands of my hair.
"Really," my first mentor in the martial arts and my master in the Heavenly Demon Flees From Responsibility technique says, crossing her own arms and, apparently, getting quite comfortable in Darkness' grip.
… Maybe she's aiming for a hovering, menacing kind of aura? Is she cosplaying as Darkness' stand? I'm sorry, Aqua, but you lack about two hundred points in masculinity to pull that off.
"Megumin megumined," I say with a carefully casual shrug of my shoulders.
The two women in front of me turn to look at the third one, who looks utterly confused yet somewhat pleased by suddenly becoming the center of attention.
"What? Have you come to finally recognize the dark magnificence—"
"Yeah, that checks out," Aqua says.
"I wish it weren't the case," Darkness adds, shaking her head with sad resignation.
"Rude! You're all rude! You shall all pay for your impudence when the time for my clan to rise arrives—"
"So. Sena," I say after briefly contemplating how unwise it is of me not to have taken the chance to use any kind of stealth technique to leg it out of here.
Also, standing up.
Just because I don't want them to think I'm into lying on the floor beneath two domineering, powerful women set on punishing me. Which is a thing I'm clearly not into, unless it's a set-up for the 'domination loss' tag, of course.
I'm a healthy young man very secure in his masculinity but also his tastes, which is why I'm not into that. At all.
…
Shut the fuck up, Subconscious Kazuma.
"She's going to wake up soon. Unless you want me to—"
"We're not murdering anyone, Aqua—"
"—unless you want me to deepen her sleep with a few points."
"… You can do that?"
"Trivially. Why?"
I look down at the dangling girl, and a part of me that is clearly related to the dark depths that birthed Vanir sends a series of random, utterly unappealing images about me lying restless on my bed, trying not to think about things and finally getting up, coming into Aqua's room, and laying my head on her lap, her dexterous fingers massaging esoteric points on my scalp as my eyes are weighted down by peaceful rest rather than—
She's smirking.
Smugly.
Fuck.
"Oh? What's that, Kazuma, have you come to recognize the value of my radiant self—"
"You're a date rape drug. You're now officially a date rape drug."
"Insolent wretch! I shall cut off your manhood and—"
"Why is it always castration with—ah, thank you, Darkness," I say when the blonde finally remembers her own agency and drops a yelping Aqua like the trash-tier waifu that she is—trash. Aqua is trash. No more qualifiers apply.
"Assuming it is even a good idea to tamper with… Sena," a chivalrous swordswoman who refuses to acknowledge the warm tingle of joy that my gratitude has seeded into her heart says, "what is the plan?"
"That depends. It's not like we can keep her unconscious for that long anyway, just… until we come up with an emergency plan for… well…"
"You being a hentai orc?" a resentful blue-haired woman rubbing her aching and not at all enticing butt asks.
"Demon Tribe, thank you very much."
"Call it whatever you like, but you're green and that's not changing anytime soon, so—what?"
Darkness and I exchange a look that some outside parties may read far too much into. Really, it's not like we're keeping secret any recent development that could impact dramatically the dynamic of the group of people I've risked my life by the side of for the past couple of years. This is all perfectly innocent. What's a titjob-blowjob between friends? Nothing. It means nothing. And who hasn't sat in silence in a candlelit room by the side of their dear friend, saying nothing as the hours went by, just holding their soft hand in your grip as your heart hesitates between racing and finally finding the peace it's craved for the best part of a decade? That's a very friendly thing to do. Honestly, more friends should do that with each other, as I stake my very honor, nay, my undisclosed dao on this one truth: there's nothing friendlier than covering a beautiful woman's breasts with your warm cum as you look into each other's eyes with enough intensity that the memory shall always be branded in your very soul.
Yes. That's what the power of friendship truly means. Which is why there are so many doujins with futa magical girls showing their friendship to one another.
Also, why is everyone staring at me?
"Gross," Aqua says.
Ah.
"I blame my heart demons. My many, many heart demons," I say.
"You and Darkness did what?" a perilously crimson Mistress of the Crimson Blaze asks.
"It was just a family technique! I was trying to drain his excess yang!"
"Oh, I'm sure you drained something all right," a fallen immortal says.
"It's true! He… He… He asked me about dual cultivation! It's all Kazuma's fault! It always is!"
"Oi," I say with the laconic intensity of someone who doesn't want to examine that argument too closely.
"Hey, when Darkness is right…" Aqua says, kneeling by Sena's side and resting a single fingertip somewhere in the middle of the brunette's hairline before closing her eyes and rubbing small, gentle circles, looking almost like a concerned healer would.
"You're not killing her, are you?"
"I'm getting her from being unconscious because of a concussion to dreaming, you NEET."
"… Can you make her dream that none of this ever happened?"
Aqua's eyes open in a slow, confused blink, and meets both my eyes and then two other women staring at her and no longer at me, which I shall count as yet another tally in my uninterrupted streak of debating victories.
Then, the former immortal looks down at my exposed cock and rolls her eyes dismissively.
"Oi," I growl.
"You would like to get into a poor woman's dreams, wouldn't you?"
"That's not—I'm trying to cover this whole thing up! For us!"
"Yeah, right, you just want to avoid being turned into pills."
"That is not a trivial concern, but Megumin just knocked her out, which, by the way, it still should be impossible—"
"You keep questioning the might of the Crimson Blaze technique at your peril, foolish peasant—"
"—and I'm pretty certain that we need some kind of cover-up for that as well, so… so…"
A plan starts to form in my head.
It's just that the part of my head that it comes from may be uncomfortably close to where heart demons are spawned.
Darkness, Megumin, and Aqua's suddenly wary eyes tell me that this is not something entirely unexpected, but, seeing as there are no other volunteers…
"Darkness," I start, slowly and carefully, "how good are you at tea ceremonies?"
━❖━
If I had to describe what Sena is currently going through, it would likely go somewhat like this:
I would wake up drowsily, the lingering effects of Aqua's pressure points slowly lifting from my mind, my vision clearing at the same rate as my thoughts.
Then I would be greeted by Darkness' rigid smile and a line such as this:
'My dear Imperial Inquisitor, on behalf of my honored father's household, I apologize for my lacking hospitality. Please, do allow me to restore this breach of etiquette with a proper tea ceremony that will show you my utmost respect for your person and post.'
Immediately after, I would blink, look around at the slowly repairing living room, realize that I'm sitting in a seiza position at the side of a low table filled with an unconventionally large array of tea ceremony implements, try to come up with an excuse to get out of the trap, and come up empty after realizing that Darkness is not acting as a reckless adventurer in need of chastising, but as the representative of a noble clan that, even when relegated to the borders of the Empire and away from the heart of the court, is still too powerful for a mere inquisitor to ignore and offend.
This would be followed by a long litany of inner curses and insults as I struggled to paint a smile on my face and graciously accept Darkness' generous offer.
You know, in an ideal world.
A world in which I'm not trapped a few rooms away, with Megumin and Aqua intently staring at my cock.
… Which, I admit, a few incarnations of Past Kazuma would've considered an ideal world, but Past Kazuma is a moron whose grave mistakes I'm always saddled with.
I'm pretty sure that could count as a dao…
"So?" an impatient, blue-haired woman says.
"So what?" I say, arms imposingly, rather than sulkily, crossed.
"Do the thing."
"I don't know what the thing is."
"Get ridiculously hard. What's the issue? You've got two beauties all to yourself. What, are you too scared to do anything now that you have a shot?"
"… Are you really trying to get that hatefuck, or is it—"
"Will the two of you just stop being… yourselves?" Megumin says with cold disdain in her visible eye.
I look down at my naked, green, broad-shouldered self sitting on an armless chair, make sure that my gaze lingers long enough to make a point, look back up, and raise a challenging eyebrow her way.
"Bit too late for that, ain't it?" I say, just to drive the point home.
For reasons only known to the Crimson Demon Clan's witches, Megumin's eye twitches.
Heh.
"… I can't believe that worked," Aqua mutters, her gaze locked down on…
…
"This is bullshit," I understandably say.
"You get hard with arguments," the moron says.
"That's not—"
"Kazuma!" Megumin says, pointing a quivering finger at me. "So that's what you kept thinking about whenever you disputed my flawless reasoning?! I can't believe that all this time, you've been lusting after me in the guise of friendship and comradery! That you kept getting hard time and again whenever you tried to look smug and witty—"
"Tried?"
"—while you were actually just thinking lewd, obscene thoughts about me and my petite—"
"You mean flat."
"—beautiful proportions. I can't believe you would… You know what? I actually can. Letch. Scum. Pervert. Die. Disappear, Scumzuma."
"Are you trying to get him harder? Because it seems to have worked."
"Don't you have a patient to be concerned about?" I ask the blue-haired, impertinent woman as my eye twitches about half a Megumin.
"This is funnier," she says with a solemn, exaggerated nod that has her hair loop bob up and down.
"… Aqua, do you really want that hatefuck—"
"I hate you both," a despairing Megumin says, dragging her hand down her face.
Aqua and I exchange a single glance, and I hate myself a tiny little bit for the immediate exchange of solidarity and comprehension, not to mention the inevitability of what's about to happen:
"Enough for a hatefuck?" we ask in perfect synchrony.
Which, for unknown reasons, has Megumin groaning in despair as colorful sparkles bloom all around her with an urgency that I decide to interrupt before another execution of her 'technique' wrecks my bedroom.
"All right, I don't think Darkness' ability to stall Sena is unlimited, so maybe we should get on with the plan—"
"Your oh-so-convenient plan to cum your orcishness out?" a skeptical immortal asks.
"… Darkness verified it's how it worked, so will you stop accusing me of—"
"It shouldn't have worked. If it's merely about draining excess yang, that's trivial for me to fix. Just the Spirit Gate and Fish Border points are more than enough to take care of that. Two needles and you would be fixed in no time—just don't use moxibustion to treat excess yang because that's a really stupid way to get—"
"Can you spare me the lecture for once?"
"Can you start studying on your own, you worthless NEET?"
"Can you two stop doing your thing and pay attention to m—to the situation at hand?"
Aqua and I look at the bundle of insecurities and neuroses who just slipped up, our eyes brimming with a mix of amusement and carefully concealed something I would rather not name.
"All right, just…" the blue-haired girl side-eyes the flustered brunette and takes a step forward.
Also, my dick.
As in, she grabs my dick. It's not like she takes it away like she's so often threatened to do.
"What are you—"
"Play along for her sake, you moron," she whispers, her eyes shining bright enough that I realize this is her being serious enough to focus.
A focused Aqua is… a rare sight.
Her hand on my cock doesn't make the situation particularly less disorienting. Nor reassuring.
"So. Dual cultivation is a perfectly normal technique. You paying attention, witch?"
Megumin…
Doesn't answer.
She's wide-eyed, staring at what's happening right in front of her, her cheeks flushed beyond anything I've seen from her when not in the throes of the worst excesses of her inborn technique. Her breathing is ragged enough to reach me from where Aqua's turned to the side to allow the younger girl to look at what's happening.
To my cock.
To allow Megumin to look at Aqua holding my hard, erect, menacingly throbbing cock.
Which she does. She does it with tangible intensity as her focus inadvertently carries some of her intent and qi toward me, a piquant feeling washing across my exposed chest like a waft of warm air smelling of gunpowder.
That is, until Aqua snaps her not-cock-grabbing fingers under Megumin's nose.
"I said to pay attention, not to literally eye-fuck him."
"I… I wasn't…"
"Sure you weren't."
"I wasn't! It's… It's just my first time seeing… him… like that…"
I open my mouth to reply that, thanks to a certain someone's penchant for friendly fire, this is far from the first time she's seen me naked.
But, well, in those cases, I wasn't being jerked off by Aqua, and that's certainly novel enough that my own brain is struggling to catch up with both the notion and the feeling of five fingers perilously prone to poking what they shouldn't now slowly tracing up my shaft until they reach the underside of my glans and are replaced by the single tip of a taunting forefinger caressing the lumpy flesh beneath.
I groan.
Megumin's eye widens.
Aqua smirks.
… I'll forever deny that has anything with the drop of transparent precum that just came out of me.
"Witch, I know this is not something you're used to, what with your lacking education, but… it isn't beyond you, all right? Just… think about it as training. You're helping Kazuma get rid of his excess yang. That should prove helpful in taming your own," Aqua says, her tone gentler than usual, showing that side of her that is so easy to forget when she lazily lounges on our couch for days on end, unwilling to do anything but bemoan a lack of manga to waste time with.
Part of me wishes she would be like this more often.
But I'm too concerned with Megumin's answer to what Aqua just offered:
A way to tame her own excess yang.
The sparkling girl looks away from Aqua's single finger and into blue eyes staring right into a lone, crimson one.
"Come near," Aqua says in what feels like a church kind of whisper.
Stocking-clad legs pouring out of an abbreviated yukata remain rooted to the subdued, unvarnished planks of my bedroom, and then she looks at me, asking for permission, guidance, or…
Or whatever it is that she finds in the single nod I offer her.
"Good. It's easy, see?" the finger traces down the bifurcated vein pulsing along the left side of my cock. "Yes, it's… sexual. But you can do it without giving too much away. Without letting him take too much. You… You just have to share, all right? You let your qi flow out of you and into him, and his does the same to you. Here. Try it."
Megumin looks between Aqua's teaching mask and my own face, which shows her an expression I do not understand as the moment feels heavier than it should, with no banter, insults, or stupid jokes to take away from the charged atmosphere suddenly crackling between the two women and me.
I nod again, and Megumin, the boastful girl who keeps trying to hide that insecure side of hers with ever-greater claims to future fame and destiny… smiles.
Shy, ears reddening, lips barely moving away from a tight, nervous line.
Then she reaches out, and her soft palm presses down on a drop of transparent precum that acts as the last barrier between her skin and mine.
"Good. Not scary, is it? Not to you, at least," Aqua says, a bit of an ironic smirk slipping out that Megumin thankfully doesn't catch as she remains silently staring with a wide eye at her hand on my cock. "Now… There's more complicated technique to bring, and… this is a path, you understand? This is a practice that can go as deep as any other internal art, but we don't have time for anything other than the base rudiments, so… Kazuma? A part of you knows what to do. Let it."
I don't nod, lick my dry lips, or do anything other than…
Look.
I look into blue, blazing eyes that show me a glimmer of what she held before she fell by my side. The almost divine woman born in a place with no illness or imperfection that had always been too curious about the lives of those she guided after death.
It's only a glimmer.
But it's enough to be a lighthouse.
A tingling in the middle of my breastbone blooms, covering my skin with something flimsier than a bubble's film, an impression of shifting iridescence unfolding in my mind as it covers all of me except for my cock.
Aqua takes her finger away.
The… the quality rushes up, to my very tip, to Megumin's palm still away from me by the mere breadth of a squashed drop of precum.
And I reach her.
Her breath hitches as I feel her. As that same quality covers her whole body. As we're bridged, united like I was to Darkness mere hours ago.
There's a flash of guilt in my chest—
"Just a technique, all right? This is just a technique," Aqua says.
I nod. So does Megumin.
"Good. Now, Kazuma, you remember what you did yesterday? How you used the Microcosm Orbit to…"
Aqua trails off, her eyes going from my own, to my abdomen, to where Megumin is slowly turning her palm left and right as shivers go up from my tip to her shoulder, making her arm deviate oh so slightly from a smooth motion.
I… Breathing. Focus.
Inhale, and lift my energy along my spine, curving over my head, descending down my face, to the palate, down my tongue, my throat, my belly, my…
My cock.
Warmth and pressure intensify, turning into heat and force, my cock stiffening even further, my tip going all but rigid against the gasping Megumin's soft palm.
"I… I should check on Darkness. And Sena," Aqua says.
But her lips remain partially open, enticingly glossy in her natural pink, the hint of depth beyond the shadow between them calling to me as I stare at her as the heat in my shaft grows more and more until I realize my rough breathing is perfectly mirrored by Megumin's.
"I should go…" she insists, swaying in place the tiniest amount that still makes me look at the way her breasts rise and fall against the ethereal gauze of her cerulean robes.
I don't say anything. I just…
Soft curves show in the translucent fabric, clearer than usual in the golden glow coming from the red wooden lattice covering my window, and blurred, tiny shadows crawl over her shape, both disguising and highlighting the stunning silhouette of the woman who was teasing my hard cock just a moment ago.
Her eyes meet mine, wide and somewhat panicked, but also—
"You can take it from here," she says to Megumin before all but running from the room.
The door closes behind her, and I look at the girl with a scribbled bandage covering one of her gorgeous eyes.
I reach up.
Tug it away.
She blinks, disconcerted, both of her crimson irises shrinking and dilating as she focuses on me, and I…
I cup her cheek, delighting in the feeling of peach fuzz on my palm almost as much as I do in the thrill of her touch on my glans. On the wet sliding of skin unmarred by any callous or burn scar.
On the way she wets her lips before leaning down, closer to me, until her breath and mine mingle together in a cloud of wasted vital energy that immediately suffuses the inside of our bodies when we inhale at once and a quiver travels through both of us, the pale curves of her cleavage quivering in a way that hints at more volume than I would've guessed.
"You're beautiful," I say without thinking, just… just feeling it. Her beauty. Her vibrancy. The way she flickers from unhinged enthusiasm to dark sarcasm or innocent bashfulness. The fickle flame of her personality and character that persists despite so many things that would've threatened to extinguish it once and for all.
I… I want to cradle it. To surround that flame with my arms, covering it from cold winds, nurturing it as it grows into a bonfire that will never be at risk of going out.
So I pull her to me.
She stumbles, her legs opening to straddle me as she falls into my lap, the yukata parting at the front and riding up until her risqué, lacy black panties are exposed once again.
Her palm never parts from my tip.
"Kazuma?" she finally asks, something of the moment breaking at the note of hesitation that irrupts into the haze guiding my thoughts and actions with inevitability and certainty that are so hard to find I mourn their loss even as they lift and my thoughts return to the present moment, where a confused girl seated on my lap warms the underside of my shaft with the heat coming straight from her wet panties.
I blink.
"This is not what it looks like," I reflexively say, just in case Chris is lurking nearby.
"… I don't even know what it looks like," Megumin mutters, her face still close to me, looking up into my eyes as strands of black, gleaming hair caress the side of my fingers as I keep a hold of her harder than…
Well, harder than a lot of things.
My cock not numbered among them.
"Like…" I try to answer, pausing only to wet my dry lips. "It looks like we're… training?" I finally offer.
Crimson eyes blink up at me.
"Right. Of course. It's a technique," she says.
But my energy and hers are still mingled. Our shared breaths are in one another's chest.
And it's very, very hard to lie like this.
"I… may be enjoying it more than usual. The training," I say with an attempt at a reassuring smile—
"Of course you would, you unrepentant letch."
"Oi."
"What? Like you haven't peeked more than once. How many times did you do this," she says, her palm descending from the slit of my tip down the underside of my shaft with wet ease, "while thinking that it was me doing it, Kazuma? How many times did you… did you think… that I…"
Her blush intensifies as she stammers into muttered silence, and her hand closes almost all the way around me.
I tug her head back with my grip on her hair.
Her mouth opens.
And I kiss the infuriating, bashful, defiant, contrite, reckless girl.
Her taste is… unlike Darkness. There's a sharpness to it, a tang that I almost fail to recognize as the spice of her energy washing over my tongue when she kisses back as intently as she ever does anything right as her grip on me slides up and down, managing to turn into sensual strokes somehow despite the clear lack of practice.
She closes her eyes.
I grab her ass, she moans, and I pull.
Sparks of crimson and other colors fly around her, crackling with her volatile power, but I don't care. I don't care if I'll get another uncontrolled explosion to the face. I don't care if we're about to cross a line, another line, so long as I can keep clinging to her, surrounding her with my arms, feeling her slight body cradled against my chest, her wet heat pressing against my cock, her slender thighs wrapped around my waist and the back of my chair.
I don't care about anything other than her.
The heat in my shaft beats to a tune that is neither my heartbeat nor my breathing, and my awareness spreads once again over the bubbly sensation shared with Megumin, the iridescent film made out of expectation, care, and something so raw it defies naming.
Something that roars.
That takes away thought.
Pure emotion burbles from my chest, radiating from the point in my breastbone where everything flowed from a moment ago, and I pull her tighter against me until she whimpers. Until she releases a needful whine as I saw myself against the roughness of her panties and knead her flesh, pulling harder on her hair so that her mouth opens wider and I can reach deeper with my tongue, tasting the back of her throat and making her squeeze my shaft in a grip hard enough that the next drop of precum spurts from my tip rather than flow.
I force myself to open my eyes when I realize that only blood-red light is surrounding me, and I find her quivering below me, eyes tightly closed, something akin to agony wrinkling her brow.
I should pull away. Talk to her.
I lift her up.
The need to tear her underwear off is just shy of overwhelming. Just on the edge of plunging me right into the depths of the roaring want that she awakens in me, and my grip on her soft cheek shifts inward until I grab her panties, my claws sinking between elastic fabric and yielding flesh, the back of my fingers sliding over her pale, unmarred skin until I have a fistful of wet clothing and I pull so that it outlines the shape of her lips kissing the back of my shaft.
She pulls away from our kiss and she howls, her head thrown back and her eyes rolled all the way up even as the tendril of mixed saliva joining our extended tongues endures, the flow of qi passing through it something that I finally notice even as the young girl swings her quivering hips up to my very tip and her grasp roughly jerks off the base of my shaft, the web of her thumb wetly slapping the underside of her panties and adding to the shudders that travel up her whole body until the lapels of her yukata spread and I witness reddish, erect nipples just slightly darker than how her lips look right now.
I… I want to do a lot of things. To her. I want her to scream, to shake, to lose herself in my touch and her desperate rubbing against the hardest part of me.
"Megumin," I call out.
Her crimson irises manage to come back from behind her lids, and her open lips still show the same shock and awe of moments ago, but…
But she's here.
In my room, on my lap, on top of me.
Warm and soft as she was when we were trapped in her icy room.
"Kazuma, I'm going to—"
"Explode."
"You… you jerk—hn!"
I pull on her wet panties, the cleft between her lips spread by the tension, pressing ever harder against my tip with a rough kiss that promises warmth and softness past the flimsy, lacy barrier that I struggle not to tear with my hand or my cock.
Crimson sparks blaze around her, promising me pain and oblivion.
So I race her.
I push up with my hips, sinking the lace into her flesh, branding the pattern of black roses on her labia with my heat, and she swings her hips down, almost taking me past her underwear and into herself.
Almost.
Almost.
I bare my teeth at her and she shudders, her head tilting sideways and offering me the flushed side of her neck, mottled pink surrounding red skin that beats to the tune of her racing heart and quivering nipples.
I lean down and close my mouth around her, tasting the thrill of fear, wonder, and desperate want that suffuses her sweat as thickly as our mingled energy when I suck, taking from her as much vibrant vitality as I push out of my cock and into her pulsing canal, wishing that her erratic power will burn the enduring barrier between us so that I can pull her down and sink into her, so that I can give her something to dread and desire in equal parts as she screams around the ecstasy I know I can bring her.
A hand that sizzles on the sweat pouring down my neck grabs and pulls me harder against her own neck, against the pulse of her life between my lips.
Everything burns inside my chest. Inside what Aqua would call my middle cauldron, where qi overflows with emotion as it turns into spirit rather than mere lust for life.
My heart beats, my cock quivers, and Megumin cries out.
Then, only then, when her grasp on my neck and shaft tightens before going impossibly slack…
I let go.
I throw my head back, away from her red neck gleaming with the mark of my saliva, and I roar in triumph as I spasm up, against her, jets of seed brimming with vitality and pure yang pouring out of me and over the front of her stretched panties, branding her with my possessive need to fill her, to have her around me, to have her crimson eyes lidded with desire, widened with shocked pleasure, softened with—
I jerk up once again, sliding beyond her opening and right into the crevice between her soft cheeks, the undeniable curves of her bottom immediately molded around my intrusion, her sweat-slick skin embracing me, rippling at my passage as I do something closer to fucking her than I have already done when I slip past her stretched panties and hotdog her as she shakes her head and bites her lower lip, more and more of my burning excess yang shooting up, splattering on her arched back, between her skin and her black, embroidered yukata as her stockings desperately rub against my waist with every spasm of her taut thighs.
A grunt escapes roughly from me, almost painfully scraping my throat as it turns into a possessive growl and my tusks and fangs tingle with something that only burns brighter when Megumin's blazing eyes lock onto mine, her lips pursing into a tiny, surprised circle, and I pull her down all the way, her wet opening grinding along my pubic bone as I keep pouring more and more of me from out of the softly encasing pillows closed around my shaft.
Then, finally, something goes out of me that is tied to all that excess yang, and I slump against the back of my chair, my head falling over the rest as I look aimlessly at the crimson rafters of my bedroom and a tiny, tired girl falls on my sweaty chest.
The haze burning through my thoughts settles down, and there's only smoldering peace. Not the serenity I struggle to find in the blue sky that Aqua teaches me lies beyond my always frantic thoughts, not the rest of sitting by a lake's shore under moonlight or even the tired, exhausted triumph of finally grasping a new technique.
It's… It's embers. Embers flickering in and out of gray, almost white ash. Still warm. Still welcoming.
Still ready to turn into a flame if someone were to lean down and carefully blow upon them.
But, for the moment, as small yet shapely breasts flatten against my skin and my grip on wet, stretched fabric finally slackens… they are just embers.
I could… I could drift off. Just like this. With her slowly breathing on top of me, silently assuring me that she's found the same peace I have, but…
But I feel the change.
My thoughts further settle, falling in place as my muscles and bones flow out of their current shape and back to me, the excessive power of my orc side waning as the energy shared with Megumin settles in my lower cauldron like it did after I consumated something like this yet not with Darkness and…
Something feels… off.
Which, if Aqua's botched attempts at making me run before I could breathe are anything to go by, is not a good sign.
I force my tired head to lean down, my chin finding Megumin's hair, and I'm suddenly hugging her protectively out of sheer, misplaced instinct, trying to push my awareness out so that I can at least diagnose the problem before—
She purrs.
Half-expecting to find a catgirl on my lap, which would at least finally settle one of my long-standing grudges with this crappy cultivation setting, I manage to look down into—
Blazing crimson eyes brimming with a light that doesn't pour out of her greet me with a suggestive lid that gets promptly outshone by Megumin turning her head in a slow circle that exposes to me her stretched throat and the way it vibrates with her low sound before she coquettishly tucks her chin, smiles provocatively, and licks her crimson lips.
"Are you… trying to keep… training?" I ask, about as able to word my thoughts as I am of letting go of her.
"Oh, I'm going to train you all right, lover," she says with a line that makes my eyes fly wide open and a voice that…
That is much deeper than her usual voice.
Then… Then I notice that she's tentatively rubbing her hips back and forth over me, slathering more of her wetness along a glimmering trail on my pubic hair as her cheeks tighten around my still-deflating shaft.
I groan at the uncomfortably intense sensation, and her seductive, teasing little smile grows into a triumphant grin filled with white teeth that seem much sharper than they should.
I'm still trying to diagnose what the Hell is going on, and why her usual sparkles of color aren't flying around her when I finally feel it.
Yang.
Excess yang.
Pulsing along the trail of my spent seed, up Megumin's spine.
Pure panic brings me back from exhaustion, and I jump up, holding her against me so she won't fall, my muscles screaming with the qi enhancement I'm going to need to race to Aqua on time to save my Megumin—
"Silly, lovely man," she says, the grin turning into something soft and fond as she pushes away from my chest and falls on her feet, standing with easy grace in front of me.
"Megumin, listen, I know that this is messing with your thoughts, but we need to get this treated before you burn out—"
Her lips silence me.
And her hand pushes.
She easily uproots me, and I windmill as I try not to fall on my back, my unbalance forcing me to step away from the smiling girl that…
That is as tall as I am.
And… noticeably curvier.
"Just look, Kazuma. You've always done so before, haven't you?" she teases as…
Her breasts fill, sloping curves pushing up, spreading her yukata further open as flush thighs pour out of the lower hem until the very edge of her cheeks bounces in place when she cocks her hips my way as she brings a bent finger up to nibble on its knuckle for the few seconds it takes to draw my attention as surely as she then draws the elegant digit past plush, crimson lips.
My cock throbs with a rush of blood that makes me go half-mast in a single moment.
And then she steps forward, a rippling thigh winding all the way around the other so that her feet are lined up and the curve of her hips gets magnified even further before she lets her wet finger out and her tongue extends past her full lips, tracing a single, purposeful line of wet promise up to the tip of her forefinger before swallowing it back with a downward nod that has her looking at me past long, black eyelashes.
I am…
Hard.
About as hard as I was a mere moment ago, when I was a hentai orc.
"Is all of that for little ol' me?" she asks with a tone that pours fake innocence all the way down her flushed cleavage, the yukata pushing her breasts up from below now trembling in strained diagonal lines that fall from the indent on her meaty arms and to the tightly tied obi that looks about to surrender against the demands of Megumin's new meat.
I fail to nod or do anything other than let out a desperate whimper that makes her lift a single corner of her lips before tracing the outline of her fang with the tip of her tongue.
I don't know what the Hell is going on. I just know that I am in dire need of an adult.
Sadly for me and Little Kazuma, there are no adults in Xianxialand, just—
The door to my bedroom slams against the wall hard enough that the formations flicker into visibility, and—
"Kazuma Satou! Is Kazuma Satou… here?"
"Oh, my, it looks like we're going to get an audience. Are you up for it, lover?"
An Imperial Inquisitor's mouth falls open.
The frantic steps racing close behind her herald the arrival of a body cultivator and a fallen immortal who immediately follow her lead.
I turn toward them, begging for any kind of help, and, as always, only find disappointment waiting for me.
So, with a sigh, I pronounce words that, even more than my hatred of explosions, will someday cement my dao:
"This is all Aqua's fault."
━❖━⧫━❖━
And so, I can stake on my true dao, that which cannot be named, that this is not, in fact, Aqua's fault.
It is Shaderic's.
Who has commissioned this story to continue for the foreseeable future.
May the Heavens be merciful, because this cast of utter morons surely won't be—as can be easily inferred from the rambling mess of nearly 10k words they just forced me to write over the past few weeks. (https://www.patreon.com/collection/2218589?view=expanded)
As always, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true): aj0413, Crimson Grave, LearningDiscord, Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, Vergil1989 Crossover King, and Xanah. If you feel like maybe giving them a hand with keeping me in the writing business (and getting an early peek at my chapters before they go public, among other perks), consider joining them or buying one of my books on https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Lavere/author/B0BL7LSX2S. Thank you for reading!