Thrown into chaos, Konrad's mind stopped working.
A sweet scent filled his nose, new sensations making his heart jump. The adrenaline and light pressure had his body thrum with excitement, and in more ways than one.
The girl straddling his hips wore almost nothing.
He noticed wild, orange tangles first — and neat little buns — but the longer he took, the more his blood boiled. Her warm and soft thighs pushed down on him, smeared with paint.
Blue lines crossed her pale cheeks and arms, too. But a circle pattern on her bare stomach drew his attention the most. Only tiny scraps of rough fabric lent her some decency.
She was somehow familiar, but Konrad ran into a wall when he tried to remember.
"Enjoying the view, nya?"
The smug grin revealed long and pointy incisors. They were a little crooked, freckles shifting on her round face and upturned nose. What he thought were buns turned out to be ears.
Triangle-shaped, fluffy orange, matching her fiery hair.
As she wiggled her hips — sending Konrad over the moon — a tail came into view. A white tuft hypnotized him, swishing around at its end.
"You shocked him, Liliske," a raspy, apologetic voice came from the right.
Realizing they weren't alone, Konrad pushed the petite body off his lap. He gathered the last morsels of his sanity, covering his groin as his face burned in shame.
"Oww, that wasn't nice," the girl complained, dusting herself off.
From the corner of his eye, he saw a tall, ginger man swing a heavy blade, decapitating a Griphlet. The last of the monsters turned into smoke, too.
Only a crystal remained, pulsing with faint purple light.
"Well, I guess we won't find the dungeon now," the man sighed, sheathing the blade.
"There will be more," the girl shrugged, picking off the other crystal from Konrad's chest.
She threw it into her gaping maw — her chewing sounding like crunching on glass. Her companion grabbed the other ones before she could get to them.
"Don't eat them all, stupid," he smacked her head. "These can fetch a gold each."
"I can't help it, they're too tasty." The girl shrugged, the chewing noises grating on Konrad's ears. "You couldn't hunt them without meow magic anyway."
Magic? The word had him perking up right away.
"W-who are you, people?"
"It talked," the man noted, wrestling the girl for another crystal.
"Oh, he talked indeed," she gulped, spinning and skipping back to him. "Who are we? That is my minion, and you can call me Her Serene Demonic Highness, Liliana the Fire Sorceress."
Her curtsy was gauche and exaggerated, cut short by another smack on her head.
"Don't listen to her. I'm Welf, she's Lily. We're from the nearby tribe," the man offered his hand, and yanked him off the ground. "Is that your cart? Are you the peddler?"
Welf was a head taller than him now that he stood. Sunburnt, muscular. The blue war-paint was present on him too, and he wasn't exactly overdressed either.
It was Konrad's first time seeing wild tribesmen whom the merchants were so scared of.
Yet they saved his life.
"No, I'm Konrad. Konrad Ostberg," he did his best to bow, not to offend his saviors. "The guards ran when those things attacked."
"Smart, you should have, too." Lily chirped, dancing around him. "Konrad, nya?"
She sniffed at him from an inch away, making him even more self-conscious. Her sweet scent was intoxicating, but he had a rough idea how bad he might have smelled after the fight.
Welf pushed the girl away, giving him some space.
He couldn't help but notice that he had no feline features.
"Go check the cart, Liliske, you're bothering him," he rasped, and she skipped away with a shrug. "If it's not yours, you don't mind if we help ourselves, right?"
Konrad had to put in a lot of effort not to stare at her back and consider the question.
He had no close ties with the trader, and they abandoned him. The horse died in the attack, and it was bulky food stuff anyway. He couldn't care less.
Drawing on his blood rushing to his lower regions, his brain started to function again.
"It's grain and some dried chanterelles, go for it," he said, looking around. "But, did you say those crystals are one gold each?"
"Oh, dibs on the mushrooms," Lily yelled, already losing interest.
"They're valuable," Welf nodded, shaking his pouch. "If you know who to sell them."
"I, um, killed two of those things, so their loot should be mine," Konrad cleared his throat. Negotiations weren't his strong suit. "I also broke my gear, so—"
"Meow, you didn't," the girl chirped, not even stopping to look up from her looting frenzy. "If they didn't go 'POOF', they weren't dead."
He remembered the monster on his chest turning into smoke.
It was his first time seeing anything like that. Beasts near Haiten didn't explode — hunters would've gone out of business if they did. What was even happening?
It was hard to make sense of anything.
"Well, I guess he wounded two of them," Welf scratched his temple. He threw him a crystal, catching him off guard. "I'm our tribe's blacksmith, so I'll fix the sword for you, too."
"Huh?" He scrambled to grab the loot, feeling warm in his palms. "Thank you?
"You don't let me eat them, but he can have one?!" Lily complained with a mouth full, while the man picked up the broken sword pieces. "I already healed him, too."
Konrad realized only then that while his tunic was in shambles, he felt no pain.
"H-how?"
"How, how? Told you, I'm a sorceress," she puffed her almost flat chest out.
He didn't miss a beat, his goal finally clear in his mind.
"C-can you teach me? Please!"
The two redheads froze. Welf suppressed a chuckle as the girl struggled to swallow.
"Teach you what?" she fluttered her long eyelashes.
"Magic," Konrad yelled, falling to his knees. "Please, I'll do anything."
"Do you happen to be a demonic entity older than time itself?" The girl raised her eyebrows, crossing her arms in front of her barely-there chest. "A dark lord with untapped potential?"
As much as he wished he were, Konrad could only shake his head.
"Then it's im-paw-sible," Lily shrugged, stuffing her face with another handful of mushrooms.
"Sorry, she was born like this," Welf tapped his back.
"Born with magic?" he asked, confused.
"No, batshit crazy," he grinned, helping him up again. "You don't want her to teach you that."
Konrad couldn't hide his disappointment, but he was still alive and could even find that mage in Aset. The girl was back to devour chanterelles, tail swishing.
When she finished — destroying at least three pounds of the food — she flashed a grin.
"Hey, even if I can't teach you, you can still be my servant," she offered. Before Konrad could respond, her cat ears started twitching, though. "Ah, they're coming back."
"The Griphlets?" Konrad looked around, but saw nothing.
Not even the redheads — almost like the dying monsters, they turned into smoke. He was alone with the cart again, but not for long.
The guards and the peddler returned a few moments later, looking surprised to find him alive.