Konrad's body thrummed from a gentle pressure—in more ways than one. Sweet cinnamon scent tickled his nostrils before he could even pry his eyes open again.
The pain? All gone.
Instead, a new sensation took over—the heat of soft thighs pressing against his groin.
A girl straddled his hips, clad in scraps of fabric; wild, orange tangles in misshapen buns.
Blue paint smeared across her arms and cheeks in hasty lines, and a circle on her stomach.
Her face seemed familiar, and so did the situation. But he hit a wall when trying to remember.
Memories, Konrad knew he had, but couldn't quite dig up.
"Enjoying the view?"
The smug grin revealed sharp, but crooked incisors. Freckles shifted on a heart-shaped face and upturned nose. What he thought were buns turned out to be ears.
Triangle-shaped and fluffy like a cat's, twitching at every noise.
Wiggling her hips—sending Konrad over the moon—a tail came into view as well.
The white tuft at its end was hypnotizing.
"For the spirits, Liliske. Have some decency," a groan from the right caught him off guard.
Konrad's heart jumped, pushing the small body off in the blink of an eye. With the last morsels of his sanity, he tried to cover his groin, face burning bright red from the shame.
"Oww, that wasn't nice," the girl complained while dusting herself off.
From the corner of his eye, Konrad saw a tall, redheaded man decapitate the last of the Griphlets with a heavy blade. The monster disappeared as if it never existed, too.
Only a crystal—pulsing with a faint purple light—remained.
"Guess we won't find the dungeon now," the man sighed, sheathing his blade.
"There'll be more clues," the girl said with a shrug, picking another crystal off Konrad's chest.
She threw it into her gaping maw, crunching like it was candy—but it sounded more like glass. Her companion grabbed the rest in a hurry before she could get to them.
"Don't eat 'em, stupid," he smacked her head. "These each fetch a gold."
"But tasty." The chewing grated on the ears. "And you can't hunt without meow magic."
Konrad perked up at the last word.
"W-who are you?!"
"Oh, it talked," the man noted, wrestling the girl for the final crystal.
"He talked indeed," she chirped, skipping back to him. "Who? Call me Her Serene Demonic Highness, Liliana the Sorceress of Dragonfire. Or something. And that's my minion, Welf."
She performed an exaggerated curtsy, cut short by another smack on the head.
"Don't mess with him. I'm Welf, she's Lily. Both from the nearby tribe," the man offered a hand, yanking him off the ground when he took it. "You're a peddler? Is that your cart?"
Even when they finally stood face-to-face, the man was still a head taller than him.
Sunburnt and wiry under a similar blue war-paint, he wasn't exactly overdressed either.
They were wildlings the merchants kept talking about—primitive and ruthless.
Yet they saved his life.
"No, uh. I'm Konrad. Konrad Ostfeld," he muttered, hoping that would not offend them. "The owner and the guards ran when those things appeared."
"Smart. You should've, too." Lily purred, dancing around him. "Konrad? Konny boy, huh?"
She sniffed at him, making him even more self-conscious. Her sweet scent was intoxicating, but with a rough idea of how bad he must have smelled after the earlier fight—
Welf stepped in, pushing her away to give him some space.
Konrad couldn't help but notice he had no feline features whatsoever. But his muscles?
"Don't be a bother, Liliske. Go, check the cart," he grunted, then forced a smile. "You don't mind if we help ourselves, right? It's not yours anyway, and we didn't eat in, uh, a while."
What was the question? He was too busy staring at a wiggling little—
Ah.
"N-no, sure," he mumbled. His brain grasped for blood that disappeared into his nether regions. "It's grain and dried chanterelles, but—you say those crystals go for a gold each?!"
"Oh, dibs on the meow-shrooms," Lily yelled, skipping towards the wagon.
"Yeah," Welf answered, shaking a pouch full of the same treasure. "If you know a buyer."
If that didn't sound like an opportunity, nothing did.
"I, uh, broke my gear killing two, so, um—their loot," Konrad had to clear his throat twice.
"Meow, you didn't," the girl protested without even looking up. "When they're dead, they go 'POOF'. Did they go 'POOF'? No? Then they weren't dead."
So when he saw a monster go up in smoke—he wasn't hallucinating?
And there was a fireball, too, but everything was hazy. Why was he even blushing now?
That girl was too wild and adorable, giving his brain some weird signals.
He couldn't make sense of anything anymore.
"Well, you did wound two," Welf noted, scratching his temple. He threw a crystal, catching Konrad off guard. "I'll fix your sword if you have the pieces. I'm a blacksmith after all."
"Huh?" He scrambled to grab the treasure, pulsing warm in his palms. "Thanks?"
"So you give one away, but I can't eat 'em?!" Lily complained, despite her mouth full of chantrelles. "And I also healed him for free. Hmpf."
Konrad's eyes widened. Right. There was that talon, but—
Even if his tunic was still in shambles, he was not.
He tapped himself down, muttering. "H-how?"
"How, how?" the girl puffed her non-existent chest, pointing at herself. "Sorceress."
She did say that before.
But if she were—Konrad dropped to his knees, hands clasped together.
"Could you teach me? P-please!"
The redheads froze. Welf suppressed a chuckle while the girl choked on the mushrooms.
"Teach what?" she asked, slamming her chest as she struggled to swallow.
"Magic," Konrad yelled, sounding desperate. "I'd do anything."
"Hmm." The girl was fanning herself, a bit red from her mishap. "Do you happen to be a demonic entity older than time itself? A dark lord with untapped potential, yet to awaken?"
What kind of question was that? As much as he wished he were, Konrad shook his head.
"Then im-paw-sible," Lily said with a shrug, returning to stuff her face with more mushrooms.
And she almost choked on them a moment before.
"Sorry," Welf said, patting his back as if trying to comfort him. "She was born like this."
"Born with magic?" Konrad asked, looking up at him with a confused expression on his face.
"No, batshit crazy," the redhead laughed. "That's the last thing you want her to teach you."
He wasn't so sure about that.
He was alive, yeah, but—even if he could find that mage in Aset, he had no money for tuition.
And learning from a beauty like her would have been a lot more motivating, too.
There she was, devouring chanterelles as her tail swished in happy, fluid motions.
Once she destroyed more than three pounds of them, she flashed him a grin.
"Hey, but teaching or not, you can still become my servant," she offered, flabbergasting him. Her cat ears twitched before Konrad could say anything. "Ah, here they come."
"More Griphlets?" he gasped, spinning around, but saw nothing.
Not even the redheads. Did they turn into smoke like the dying monsters?
He was alone with the cart again, but not for long. The peddler and the guards came running with reinforcements from a nearby village. And they all seemed shocked to find Konrad alive.