A Temporary Return, and Putting Affairs in Order (8)

"What?!! That's actually true?!!"

Startled by Hwayeon's story, I seized her shoulder, trying to settle the heart hammering in my chest. She flinched at ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the force of it and clutched Ispect tight against herself.

Franc's eyes lit at the same news — that she, like me, could shrink her body. She came up before Hwayeon, knelt, set both hands on the ground, and looked down. Those enormous, lush breasts swayed under their own weight, and my eyes went there of their own accord.

No. This is fine. Eyes go where they go. That's a male's instinct!

"I-I think it'll be faster to hear it straight from the source. Franc? Would you open your hand?"

My grip was still on Hwayeon's shoulder, and a vast swell of breast was swaying right in front of her face. She lost her composure entirely. Flustered, she looked up at Franc and got the words out with me.

Franc opened her palm. Without a moment's hesitation Hwayeon leapt onto it and set Ispect down there. I laid my hand on the spear beside her, and Nuhodi, as if she had been waiting, sent her words through.

"So Miss Franc has truly grown vast? How fortunate that I happen to know a secret art that fits this exactly. The art I would teach you is not difficult, yet neither is it easy. In the language of this age, it would be called Miniaturization — the art of making oneself small."

"If you mean to teach us a secret art, I thank you in advance. There are no restrictions on learning it, are there?"

The question remembered what Myrddin had said — that neither I nor my lovers had so much as a damn scrap of talent for a druid's mysteries. The moment Nuhodi spoke, Franc couldn't hold it back. She must have been even more desperate than I was to get her body smaller.

"Depending on your aptitude, the learning may take time. But I am not teaching you this for nothing, so there is no need to thank me."

Huh. It isn't free? Hwayeon seemed not to have heard that part either. Confusion crossed her face, and she opened her mouth.

"Nuhodi, did you not say you would teach the secret art? Why do you change your word?"

"I have not changed my word, nor have I spoken a lie. A secret art is, as the very words say, an art that is hidden — a concealed move. I do not think it a wrongful bargain to ask a price in exchange for teaching that hidden hand."

I didn't think it was a bad thing either, asking a fair price for a secret art. If anything, someone who demanded a proper return out in the open was less likely to be running a scheme behind your back, and that put the mind at ease. Hwayeon's face flushed, the look of someone who felt she'd been had. I set a hand on her shoulder, gave it a slight squeeze, and spoke.

"All right. What are your terms?"

Of course, if she demanded something absurd, I'd drop the whole thing on the spot. Asking me to make Hwayeon's body move. Demanding some living creature she could possess. That sort of thing.

"That would be—!"

"That would be?"

"Seoha, I demand your regular petting! Once a week, at the least. Promise me thirty minutes!"

For a long moment, none of us had a word.

"And if circumstances force you to skip that week's petting, you will attach thirty percent interest to the time you failed to give, and include it in the next session! There will be no negotiation as to the hour or the number. If you refuse, then I will not teach you either."

Haah. I'd been braced for some dire condition, and I felt like a complete idiot for it. Franc and Hwayeon too, the light gone from their eyes... wait. The light was gone?

"Nuhodi. I will not tolerate you aiming for the fourth place."

"Ow, ow. Hwayeon. Loosen your hand, loosen it! I am crumpling!"

Franc's fingers twitched as if she badly wanted to close them into a fist. With me and Hwayeon standing on that hand, her face said she couldn't quite bring herself to do it.

"Not difficult. If that's all it is, fine. But the petting starts after Franc has learned the art. In exchange, I'll give you ten minutes up front as a deposit. Deal?"

"Deal!!"

"Seoha!"

"Seoha?!"

Hwayeon and Franc called my name as if they hadn't expected me to accept. Come on — why such an overreaction to a little petting?

"Ah, I should say this beforehand. The secret art of Miniaturization is not an art that makes the body small forever, simply by learning it. According to one's proficiency, the duration of the shrinking lengthens, and the ratio of reduction is set. So if one wishes it to last, and to become small enough to pass for human, the one who learns the art will need steady training and practice. Do you agree?"

"Oh, that's how it works? All right."

Franc and Hwayeon were staring straight at me with faces like something about this sat wrong in their guts, and a displeased feeling rose. If I put those expressions into words, it came to this.

"Am I meant to take those looks as you seeing me for some degenerate who goes into heat over a stick?"

"It is not that. But petting, of all things...!"

"You do not even pet us on any such schedule..."

Did I not? I held them with plenty of passion every night. What was a little petting, to make a fuss like this?

"Haah — your companions are greedy things. They spend every night in heated coupling upon the bed, and yet they cannot tolerate a mere thirty minutes of petting, once a week? Greed, carried too far, is how one loses even what one already has!"

"Are you not demanding this because you yourself are addicted to Seoha's petting! A Grand Priestess who hungers after lust! You are unworthy of the title!"

"What! To disparage gentle contact between man and woman, touched with a soft fondness, and call it lust! That itself is an outrage against speech! Then is Hwayeon — whose body burns with desire unless Seoha's erect member stirs her sex on a regular basis — a nymphomaniac?!"

"Mmph!?"

"For the twenty-four days Seoha spent in the Phase World, every night, writhing on the bed, you touche—"

"Mmph!"

Hwayeon's rebuke seemed to have grazed a raw nerve. Nuhodi's voice came back thick with anger, and she was about to say something more when Hwayeon, horrified, snatched Ispect from my hand with lightning hands.

So she'd been touching herself while I was gone? Whatever word had been about to follow, there was only one thing it could have been. No wonder Hwayeon and Yeongeun had come at me so roughly last night.

Sure enough, it seemed I'd guessed right. Shame looked ready to burst her. She put her strength into Ispect and began to bend it, as if she meant to snap the spear in two. It hummed and whined like a thing screaming. I stopped her with a face of pure, radiant ignorance.

"What's wrong? I don't know what this is about, but stop. Keep that up and you'll actually break it."

Not knowing what reaction I'd get if I tried to take Ispect in hand, I said it while patting her shoulder. Face gone pure red, she threatened Nuhodi.

"Say one unnecessary word and I will not let it go!"

Franc was just as startled — her eyes went round — but a moment later she gave a small nod, a look that said she understood.

The brief uproar passed. Red-faced Hwayeon, me pretending not to know how she felt, and Franc: the three of us learned from Nuhodi the concept behind the secret art of Miniaturization.

Before the formula, she said, one had to grasp the basic concept. I ran Mana Sieve through my head and memorized every word she spoke, and I still could not tell whether it was human speech, a dog's noise, or the language of something from off this world.

Whether my language center was converting her words on its own, classical lines came pouring down in a rush. I simply let go of Ispect. I had a feeling that even if I learned the formula after hearing all of that, I still wouldn't be able to use it.

But maybe that was only me. At the prospect of a means to shrink, Franc was showing a focus that bordered on the uncanny, and for some reason Hwayeon was concentrating just as hard, not taking her hand off the spear. Franc's posture, though, was a little...

She was down on all fours like a cat, in nothing but her underwear, and the desire to see her from behind began, quietly, to stir. I glanced at her. She was pouring her whole mind into Nuhodi's lecture. Even if I circled around behind her, she wouldn't notice.

I sidled back, watching for a reaction, confirmed that every nerve of hers was fixed on Nuhodi, and moved quickly toward her backside.

"Mmm. Hiarid, do you know what they mean by a real spar?"

=I would venture that it means to fight as one would in true combat.=

And on that backside were Miho and Hiarid, who were supposed to be receiving combat training. The two of them had agreed to train, and now they were blinking at Franc, who had suddenly set them down and gone off to do something else.

"Then let's try what a real spar is, just the two of us, first!"

Franc's plump ass, and those soft-looking outer lips, were swallowing a pair of thin, narrow panties and baring the cleft. I wanted that sight in a picture — and I stopped Miho and Hiarid, who were squaring up to fight.

"Hiarid might be all right, but you can't control your strength, Miho. Hiarid could get badly hurt. So until Franc allows the spar, don't even think about going at her."

"That's how it is?"

Hiarid was an Aberrant, so her durability outstripped a human attribute-user. But her opponent was Miho, a high-rank subspecies. If they sparred as if it were real, the odds of Hiarid being seriously hurt were high. Miho had never taken an attribute attack either, so it was no safer for her. I told her as much, and she nodded, saying she ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠understood.

"Yes... yes. I understand. Yes, then the rest can wait until tonight."

Whether the transmission of the concept had ended, Franc began to raise her upper body. In comics and animation they always stick in a grrk-grrk, or a long kreeeak, when a giant moves. Now I understood what a ridiculous thing that was. A person made of blood and flesh, simply moving — there was no way a roar like that would come of it.

Well. If she were about a thousand meters tall, maybe?

The straighter her back became, the more her weight settled into her hips, and her heels dug into the flesh of her rear. Under that pressure the plump flesh around her sex warped, and the tissue-thin cloth of her underwear drove into the cleft, fiercely advertising that pink place.

She isn't trying to seduce me right now, is she?

"I've memorized all of it... yes. The way one moves Phase Power?"

"...Franc seems to understand it... I don't really..."

I'd thought the transmission was finished. Apparently not. Listening to Hwayeon's small, faint voice, I drew closer to that pink cleft, and a powerful scent of apple hit me. My head swam as if I'd downed a whole bowl of concentrated apple extract.

Franc had always worn only slips, or bikini-cut panties. A T-string seemed to be a first for her, and her sitting posture was poor enough that she had no idea her sex was on full display. I came close enough to reach out and touch it, and the cleft — dry, without a trace of wet — filled my eyes.

The string of the panties she had on was as thick as a tug-of-war rope. That was only true for me. From Franc's side of things, it was no different from a thin cord.

"It's difficult. Yes, yes. I'll work hard at it...?"

I caught the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠string and drew it aside. The pink clit, sheathed in its hood, came into view, and the opening of her urethra with it. Given the posture, the entrance itself was unfortunately hidden behind the perineum, and I couldn't quite—

"Kyaah!!? S-Seoha?!"

Ack! The ass is getting away!

"W-What are you doing~!"

"You were showing all of it, so I was looking."

"?!"

Only then did she catch on to the state of her panties. Her face went red. She hastily fixed them and scrambled into her pants.

"Franc may have become a giant, but your desire for that body is unchanged. Truly like you, Seoha."

"What are you admiring, Hwayeon!"

"Well! My desire is constant!"

"And Seoha, do not look so pleased with yourself!"

Even so, embarrassed as she was, Franc didn't look displeased. With an expression that said I was truly hopeless — having pulled on only her pants — she went over to Miho and Hiarid, shot me a glare, and spoke to Miho.

"Miho, Hiarid. I am sorry to have kept you waiting. Shall we begin?"

"Yeah!"

=Yes.=

They shifted ground. I watched Franc teach Miho and Hiarid the fundamentals and the stances of close combat, then went over to Hwayeon, who stood with Ispect gripped tight and her eyes closed.

"Think you'll be able to learn that secret art? Even if you do, I can't see where something like Miniaturization would be any use."

"I do not know."

She opened her eyes, looked at me, let out a small sigh, and glanced down at Ispect.

"The secret art of Miniaturization has no use for me. Even so, if I study in order to learn a secret art, perhaps some insight will come of it... I am hanging a thread of hope on that."

If it were me, I'd learn Miniaturization and use it to sneak into a women's bath, or a women's locker room. Honestly, though, I had Spatial Perception, so something like that was meaningless. Even the part about passing through small, narrow places was useless to me. I had Space Leaping.

The truth was, our Grand Blue Building had a women's staff locker room, and a shared shower, and sometimes... ahem.

"Yeah. Work hard."

"...Nuhodi is badgering me to fulfill the contract."

Face displeased, she glared once at Ispect, handed it to me, went to a corner of the living room, sat down, and began to meditate.

"I am very, very much looking forward to this! The quality of the lectures I pour upon your companions will vary according to how softly and pleasantly you pet me! So pet me, quickly, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠quickly!"

I snorted a laugh at the voice thick with expectation and stroked gently along the shaft. Nuhodi's rebuke came down like thunder.

"What are you doing?! There is no TP! No TP! Are you toying with me right now?!"

God. A genuine perverted nympho.

That night Yeongeun got off work and came straight to the camping trailer in Shinchon-dong, where the rest of us were. She begged Nuhodi to teach her the secret art of Miniaturization too, and was told, "Your nature is not clean, and you are full of selfish desire. You are unfit to learn a secret art." She sulked completely.

The moment she sulked, she flung Ispect aside, forced me — I'd been watching from beside her — down on my back, took out Champ, wrapped a hand quietly around it, and started licking and sucking. The sudden blowjob startled me. Then I caught the way she kept glancing at the spear flung on the bed, and the way Ispect hummed and rang its shaft, and I realized she was trying to provoke Nuhodi.

Well. In a situation like this, getting a blowjob out of it was my win, wasn't it? I let her devote herself to the service, swept her long black hair back, and asked.

"Is it really all right to come straight here, and not stop by the penthouse in the residential wing?"

"Hauung. It's fine, it's fine. If Siha, or Mother, or Father gives me a funny look, I'll just say I'm learning combat from Franc!"

"Queen of Excuses indeed— ghk!"

She had suddenly swallowed me deep. Like that, her throat bobbed as she gulped, and she glared up at me. I groaned at the sight of her — throat bulging, taken to the root — and her eyes went catlike. Slowly, she began to move her head back and forth.

I enjoyed the warm grip of her throat for a moment while she worked me on her own, then took her head in both hands. Yeongeun caught my intent, smiled with her eyes, and let the strength go out of her head. Excited by that gesture — do as you like — I gripped her and rammed myself in, rough.

Glrk— ghhk— glurk!

"Nnnh—! Yeongeun's throat-cunt clings like fresh rice cake, stuck fast—!"

Every time Champ pushed down into her throat, the thin skin of her neck bulged up, and watching that, my sadism was satisfied faster than it had ever been. I took the tears she squeezed out under the rough, violent deepthroat as my signal, and began to pour the whole day's built-up desire straight down her throat.

"I'm cumming! Don't spill a drop — drink it all!"

"Mmph! Gulp, gulp."

I came enough that those sharply drawn abs of hers loosened and her belly rounded out. Yeongeun's eyes went half-unfocused, and she started to float.

At that sight, as if she couldn't endure it any longer, Nuhodi set the shaft humming like the outdoor unit of an air conditioner.

Vmmm—! Vwooom! Vmmm!!

I let the swelling thrum of Ispect pass by my ear, tossed Yeongeun onto the bed, flipped her over, pulled down only her slacks and her panties, and pushed straight into a cunt already soaked through.

"Ahn..."

The moment I was in, she thrashed. I used the Blue Space Wall and lashed her hands and feet into a crushing turtle-shell bind. Whether it was the sense of restraint through her whole body, she panted and wiggled her fingers. I swept the hair at her temple gently back behind her ear and asked.

"How does it feel, turned into a helpless woman?"

She didn't seem to have the mind left to answer. She only panted, the tails of her eyes trembling. Even so, her inner walls mouthed at Champ as if licking, like a mouth full of candy. Impressive, I supposed. I looked down at the sex nibbling and working me, then struck that peach-ripe ass.

The crack of it rang out.

"Kyagh!"

"Answer me!"

"I-I'm scared...!"

Her voice shook with fear, but in her eyes a shadow of desire wavered, impossible to hide. Like that, I spread her asshole, poured TP into it, and slammed my hips up. Each time, her anus twitched, and the sound of her breath failing spilled from her mouth.

"Haaang! Ah! Ahh, I'm going to lose my mind, ah! Anh! Haahk!"

She wanted to move and couldn't, and the restraint seemed to drive her further into heat. Slowly, her eyes began to roll back. I yanked that swaying hair, rough, and she choked with her neck bent, panting. Sweat and spit began to run from her reddened face and her open mouth.

I rode a rhythm that only sped up, striking until her ass flushed red, injected Mana Sieve into my cock to make it larger still, and drove it in. Her cherry lips parted wide — and yet, far from a moan, not even the sound of breath came out. I watched her bound limbs spasm and her toes curl, and then a good idea came to me. I shaped the Blue Space Wall into the exact size and form of my cock and shoved it into her ass.

"Khyaaang!?"

Through Champ, buried in her cunt, I could clearly feel the shape of the intruder that had pushed in past the thin membrane.

This — this was a pretty unique sensation.

Each time I thrust, the space that intruder occupied in her rear passage made her pussy feel packed tighter than usual. Whether that pressure passed straight through to her and turned into pleasure, she began to spill those unidentifiable, alien sounds she sometimes made when she was excited enough to lose her mind.

"!%#$%^?!?! Hwaaang! Haahk! @!#^$%#*!!"

I was feeling it too. Those meat-walls, chewing at my other self sunk deep into her belly — a pleasure so sharp I thought I might cum at any moment. I moved the Blue Space Wall dildo, buried deep in her asshole, with a gentle stir, working her rectum, and each time she went hik, hiik, hihhik, and her pupils vanished up behind her eyelids. Drool spilled in a string from her open mouth.

That was when it happened.

I felt her cervix bear down on Champ. I had given her five more piston-strokes when she screamed without a sound, and the pressure inside her cunt spiked so hard that I reached a point where I simply could not stay inside. Half by my will and half against it, the joining came undone, half-forced — and in that instant—

"Nngghhh!"

Eyes rolled white, she bucked at the waist and began to fire her fluids like a water gun. Face buried in the pillow, every time she screamed without sound the muscles inside her thighs split apart and a jet shot out, and that stream stabbed my lower belly hard enough to hurt.

"Heh heh heh. Truly something. A regular squirt-gun girl."

I rubbed her clit savagely with my fingers, telling her to give me more, and a second fountain started. Fshuuuut — fshht!

"—!!"

Having poured out nearly a liter in that fountain, she made a boiling sound in her throat and went limp. Only after seeing that did I enter her again, move my hips, and begin to spray semen into the womb of Yeongeun, hanging slack as if she'd fainted.

Letting out the lust that had built from seeing Franc's holes during the day, a pleasure came over me fierce enough to throw my back out. I kept cumming for several minutes, until her fist-sized womb had swollen as far as it could swell and I was wondering what to do — and then the twitching pink anus, like a chrysanthemum, caught my eye.

I took the semen and fluids leaking from where we were joined, smeared them on her asshole for lubricant, and pushed my glans in. With a smooth, pleasant pressure, I sank to the root. Whether she had already passed out, she didn't move at all, head hanging limp. I kneaded her body and rocked my hips, and before long the urge rose again.

This time I didn't wait. I poured in as much semen as it took to satisfy me, and for the first time in a while I got to swell Yeongeun's belly up big as a mountain.

"You are truly a beast!"

I fetched two plugs, each as thick as my forearm, from the residence in the Grand Blue Building, fitted them into her cunt and her ass so the semen wouldn't leak, and picked up Ispect. Nuhodi immediately poured out a tirade in a voice full of reproach.

"Yes?"

"To treat a woman's body as a flesh toilet — what do you take a companion for! Unbelievable. I did not see you in such a light, and I am disappointed! How can you commit such beastly acts upon your own partner...!"

"Are you saying you're jealous of Yeongeun?"

"...Yes."

When I translated that scolding and handed it back, Nuhodi hesitated, as if she'd lost her words for an instant, then quietly agreed.

I stripped Yeongeun, brought a warm wet towel, wiped her down, and covered her with the blanket. Nuhodi began to whine in a voice that could not hide her envy.

"Huu, huu. Playing a real-life cam — live porn — in front of a maiden who has not tasted a man in thousands of years. You haven't a scrap of consideration. Not so much as the sleep in an ant's eye. A cruel man!"

"Porn? Where did you hear that?"

"I overheard, when Hwayeon was studying positions on that thing called a laptop. They call lewd videos, or videos of sexual acts, porn, do they not? Aah — not having a body is terribly sad at times like these."

"If sadness drives you to assault people, or to try anything with Hwayeon's body, I will not let it stand."

"I know. I know. Which is why, once your companions have learned the secret art of Miniaturization, you must spend TP and pet me for thirty minutes, once a week. I shall relieve this desire that way. It is a promise!"

"Don't worry. I'll be sure to keep it."

Franc, Hwayeon, Miho, and Hiarid were still wholly absorbed in training, late into the night. I started toward them, listening to Nuhodi emphasize the promise a second time and a third, and laughed under my breath.

If Nuhodi had a body, wouldn't she try to pin me down? If I ran the odds on my lovers moving to stop her, and the argument evolving into a fight at the end of it, I was fairly sure it would come out to one hundred percent.