The Incubus Who Visited the Church #6
The Incubus Who Visited the Church #6
On the walk back to my inn room, my thoughts wouldn't stop churning.
She'd show me the scene of a wedding night once we grew closer?
Didn't that basically mean she was offering me her virginity?
The thing men and women do on their wedding night is nothing other than blazing-hot sex.
Unless she planned for us to have a dance battle all night long, she had to mean the real deal, with actual penetration.
"So if we get closer... she'll give me her virginity? Just how much closer do we have to get?"
Up until now, the actual act of penetration between me and Rebecca had been practically taboo.
We'd never explicitly said it was off-limits, but anyone with half a brain could read the room.
Rebecca would get this terrified look on her face every time she saw my massive cock. Honestly, anyone would feel fear at the thought of a giant rod going into their tiny little slit.
I mean, I felt my chest swell with awe every morning when I saw my own morning wood standing tall.
But Rebecca had said she'd be fine handing over her virginity once we grew closer.
I couldn't stop agonizing over what exactly "closer" meant.
How was I supposed to get closer to Rebecca?
Should I just shower her with gifts she'd like?
I had no money...
Winning a woman's favor as a Bronze adventurer was a brutal business.
If I had that kind of cash, I'd have quit the adventuring life long ago.
I had no choice but to rack my brain for something other than buying her affection.
"WTB guide on how to get close to a red-haired girl..."
Deep in thought, I trudged home.
Even after I got back, I mulled it over for a long while, but no brilliant plan came to mind.
Getting close to someone wasn't the kind of thing you could force with tricks in the first place.
Isn't friendship just about naturally being around someone until your wavelengths click? If anything, overthinking it might make you screw up for no reason.
Like cracking a painfully forced dad joke and making the atmosphere ice-cold.
"This is tough..."
And the more I thought about it, the less sure I was that Rebecca's words even had a naughty meaning at all.
Wasn't it entirely possible that there really were just a few dance moves left to learn?
If I busted my ass sucking up to her to get closer, only for it to end after watching a dance, I'd be genuinely devastated.
Sure, Rebecca's belly dance was mesmerizing, but sex was objectively more mesmerizing.
"Sex..."
What the hell was that girl thinking when she said that?
Even going to find her just to ask that one question out of curiosity was a dicey proposition.
- Luke? What brings you back?
- I had something to ask. You wanna do the deed with me?
- You crazy son of a bitch.
I'd definitely end up getting a face full of curses and sent packing.
All I could do was sprawl out on the inn bed for a long afternoon nap, then kill time by practicing magic.
That's how I spent the next few days, holed up in my room.
Then one morning, while sorting through my belongings, I found a clump of feathers buried in my backpack.
"Owlbear feathers..."
Leftover harvest from the last caravan escort quest. A feather clump worth a total of twelve Copper. If I left them stashed away any longer, the feathers might rot, so I decided to head out and offload them.
The general goods store in Yoen-su.
Among them, I knew one honest shop that paid fair prices. The place run by a bald owner named Gis. It was the same shop Rebecca had guided me to back when we cleared our very first quest together.
I stuffed the feather clump into my backpack and set off for the general goods store.
"Welcome."
"Hello, Gis."
When I opened the door and stepped inside, the bald shopkeeper looked at me with recognition.
"A regular Incubus. Here to sell something?"
Gis took one look at my horns and waved like he was genuinely pleased to see me. An adventurer like me visiting a general goods shop meant I had something to sell. His gaze naturally drifted to the backpack hanging from my shoulders.
"Owlbear feathers. How much could I get for this amount?"
I pulled the feather clump from my backpack and handed it over to Gis.
"For this amount... I can give you twelve Copper. You won't get a better price anywhere else."
Exactly the fair amount I'd been expecting. Even after sitting in my backpack for days, the quality didn't seem to have suffered much. I handed over the feather clump and received twelve Copper from Gis.
The swift transactions were what made this place great.
Any other merchant would've waged psychological warfare trying to haggle the price down somehow.
"Twelve Copper it is."
"Come again next time. Anything worth coin is always welcome."
I finished counting the coins. The moment I looked up again—
I'd been glancing around the counter area to see if there was anything to buy, when something caught my attention and made me pause. I'd spotted an empty space on the wall behind the counter where merchandise usually hung. An empty space in itself wasn't strange, but I was a regular here. When something that had always been there suddenly disappeared, you couldn't help but take notice.
There had definitely been a huge shield in that spot.
A tower shield big enough to cover your whole body.
An item that hadn't sold for months, something Gis considered a white elephant.
It was priced at a whopping five Silver, so nobody could bring themselves to buy it. Anyone looking to drop that much on equipment would be better off visiting a blacksmith anyway.
"Gis, did you sell that shield over there?"
"Ah, the tower shield, you mean? Got lucky and sold it to a customer yesterday. It'd been taking up space for three months, so what a relief. ...Hm? Now that you mention it..."
Gis stopped mid-sentence and looked at me.
"I ought to thank you."
"Why's that?"
"The customer who bought the tower shield. She was that red-haired young lady you brought here last time. A cute-faced girl, so I still remember her clearly."
"Rebecca bought it? That shield...?"
"So the young lady's name was Rebecca? Anyway, she came by my shop, browsed around, and seemed to take quite a liking to the tower shield. Paid five Silver upfront out of her own pocket. A girl with deep pockets, she was."
Five Silver. Paid in full upfront?
I instantly regretted not introducing Rebecca to a blacksmith earlier.
For five Silver, a blacksmith could potentially forge an even better shield for the same price.
But that didn't mean this general store's tower shield was bad by any means.
The shield face was wide enough to comfortably block arrows and the like.
Gis smiled as he spoke.
"Every adventurer ought to take after that young lady. Splashing out coin without hesitation to upgrade your specs—that's how it's done. You keep clowning around with low-quality gear and you'll never escape Bronze. Speaking of which, didn't you spend some coin on your own equipment? I see you carrying around a decent crossbow."
"That was a gift from someone I know."
"Hm?"
The crossbow wasn't something I'd actually paid for.
It was a gift I'd received from Ms. Wendy while working adventurer jobs.
She was my receptionist, and apparently she'd felt sorry seeing me hunt solo, so one day she gave me a crossbow that had been gathering dust at her place.
When you think about it, Wendy had practically bent me over and rawdogged my pride that day.
"Still, you must have some gear you bought with your own coin, no?"
"If I had to say... the leather armor's pretty much it."
A two-Silver leather armor set.
Even that was secondhand gear someone else had used before me.
Up until now, I'd been stingy about getting new equipment because I figured I'd never escape Bronze anyway.
I'd always believed making it big as an Incubus adventurer was impossible. Now that I'd learned magic, the circumstances had changed, but still.
Gis stared at me with a look of surprise.
"So you weren't exactly the passionate-adventurer type. But if you're aiming for Silver promotion, you need to mind your reputation, you know. An adventurer who goes over a year without investing in spec upgrades is bound to attract misunderstandings. Ever heard this saying before?"
"What saying?"
"Bread-eater bug."
"...Bwuh."
Bread-eater bug!
I'd definitely heard that term before.
In the adventurer industry, they used that slur for adventurers who'd given up on upgrading their specs.
The implication was that instead of spending money on equipment, they blew it all on bread.
Obviously adventuring is a livelihood, so everyone buys bread, but bread-eater bugs took it to a whole other extreme.
"You're an adventurer yourself—you might form a fixed party someday. If there's a bread-eater bug in the roster, a fixed party can't function properly. While the other members are all upgrading their specs, one guy is just loafing around and freeloading. Do you get what I'm saying?"
"I get it... Obviously."
I knew full well that in the adventurer world, bread-eater bugs were the primary culprits behind fixed party collapses.
On the mild end, you had people who just skimped on gear. On the severe end, there were those bastard insects who wouldn't even use consumables properly.
Bread-eater bugs with shoddy equipment were always the first to tap out in combat.
After a few more battles like that, it was an unwritten rule that a heavy, tense meeting would eventually take place among the party members.
One of two things happened after such a meeting.
Either the fixed party disbanded.
Or the bread-eater bug was banished.
Hearing Gis's words, I couldn't help but shiver with dread.
If things kept going like this and people started treating me like a bread-eater bug...?
And more than anything, I already had a fixed party.
Rebecca had every right to publicly shame me for not spending money on gear. She had, after all, paid five Silver upfront for a tower shield.
'The total money Rebecca's earned from quests up until now is probably only about eight Silver. So she invested more than half her earnings into equipment? What a complete lunatic.'
I felt a terrifying chill at Rebecca's breakneck spending spree.
Could she even properly cover her living expenses with what was left?
This girl had absolutely zero brakes.
A sudden thought struck me.
The next time we met, Rebecca was definitely going to show off that shield.
Then she'd casually glance at me and maybe say something like—
- Luke, you haven't changed a thing, have you.
- I-I'm planning on getting gear too.
- You're just planning on it without actually doing it, right? Don't tell me you blew all your reward money on bread?
"Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuurrrk!"
Just imagining it made my whole body break out in goosebumps.
She was a newbie—how would she even know adventurer slang like "bread"? Still, she could easily say something in the same vein.
If I ever heard words like that, my pride would be shattered beyond recovery. I wouldn't be able to lift my head.
I was the leader of the fixed party, in name at least. I couldn't afford to fall behind a newbie.
"Y-you're right. Gis."
"Glad you understand. If you have any ambition to rank up as an adventurer, you'd better start paying attention to spec upgrades."
"Thanks for the advice. Even though there's nothing worth buying in this shop, of course."
"You cheeky little..."
Couldn't let him get any ideas about hawking his wares by seizing the opening.
I said goodbye to Gis and promptly got the hell out of the shop.
I walked through the city streets for a while, mulling over the whole spec-upgrade situation.
Rebecca had thrown the first punch, so I at minimum needed to make some kind of gesture showing I was upgrading my specs too.
That was the implicit rule of a fixed party.
Should I get myself a new piece of gear too?
I'd earned a decent chunk of coin. Maybe buy a pauldron or something with it?
The fastest shortcut was to just get new equipment myself.
If I bought a decent pauldron and casually showed it off, I could at least keep my conscience intact.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized there was another path to raising my specs besides buying gear.
'I'm a mage, aren't I? Wouldn't it be way better to just learn new magic? My role is rear support anyway, even if I suit up in protective gear.'
Equipment eventually becomes useless and gets discarded someday.
You might upgrade to higher-quality gear, or you might just have to replace it because it got damaged.
But with magic, at least, there was nothing to throw away.
A spell you'd mastered once could be used forever.
And more than just slapping on equipment, learning magic suited my tastes far better.
'Learning magic is the better move.'
After agonizing over it, I made my decision to learn new magic.
Of course, I didn't mean learning from the book I'd been reading up to now.
Strange as it was, new magic still hadn't appeared on the book's next page.
Even though I'd finished the quest and come back, the performer was still frozen in the exact same pose.
If I wanted to learn new magic now, I'd need to use a different method.
I'd been curious about how other mages learned their spells anyway.
In Yoen-su, aside from the Magic Tower, there were a few rare places where you could learn magic.
Namely, magic shops run by wandering magicians.
Rumor had it you could acquire Magic Tomes there. Unlike my book, these were places that sold ordinary Magic Tomes. Maybe a Tome I bought with money would teach me magic more easily than my book did.
'There was a magic shop near the entrance to the underground waterway, right? I'm pretty sure that's the one.'
I remembered the magic shop in Yoen-su.
After living in Yoen-su for two years, I'd naturally come to know the location. Back in my newbie days, I'd frequently taken quests to clean out the underground waterway, and during my comings and goings, I'd spotted the magic shop's sign.
Of course, the place had such a gloomy atmosphere I'd never considered going inside.
Tch. That newbie girl.
Going off to buy gear without saying a word to me.
Couldn't she have at least asked her party leader for a bit of advice?
Feels bad, man.
Clicking my tongue, I headed toward the underground waterway where the magic shop was located. If possible, I wanted to learn magic there that was even more valuable than her tower shield.
That way, I'd be the one who could publicly shame Rebecca instead.
Roasting your party members before heading out on a quest—that was the true joy of a fixed party.
I wanted to tease Rebecca until she felt deep shame over that gear she'd proudly bought.
"Brace yourself, you newbie girl."
If only there were some fire-starting magic...
I'm a mage now, so it's about damn time I learned to light a fire, don't you think?