Using the sword to fight the wolves from the start wasn't a great idea, because it required me to have the reflexes and speed necessary to sidestep the first charge and then hit my foe with the blade while it was airborne or the moment it landed. While I could pull stats from the girls, doing so would weaken them.
We decided that stats pulling was an advanced strategy that would do more harm than good unless we practiced it a lot, which we weren't going to do until we were good at normal fighting.
Thanks, Elyra, for always being the voice of reason.
Therefore, the amended tactic was to use the shield to tank the wolf's first charge without killing it, then unsummoning the shield and switching to the sword to kill it while it was stunned. Easier said than done, of course. Switching weapons was quick, at the cost of mana, but the real problem was me. I needed to get used to the feeling of going from a shield—which I didn't even hold properly, sometimes with one hand, sometimes with two—to a massive sword that weighed nothing.
What better way to practice than to try it against live enemies?
Thanks, Vespera, for being the voice of… not reason. But I couldn't deny the fact that I preferred going against wolves much more than practicing shadow swording or whatever the name was.
The first fight went just about how I expected it to go. The girls quickly dealt with their enemies, while I concentrated on my own fight. I moved slowly, clunkily, and messed up the weapons switch.
At least I learned that, with 115 Vitality, a single wolf wasn't too much of a threat to me. While its claws and teeth did manage to pierce my skin, they didn't sink into my flesh more than a centimeter or so, and even that they did with effort. My muscles and tissues were denser and tougher than ever.
Another thing I learned while trying to dislodge the wolf from my leg was that I was strong. Very strong. I pried its mouth open with my bare hands, dislocating its jaw and then backhanding it so hard it died on impact.
Not the plan, but it worked.
Elyra rushed to me, fussing over my wounds while shooting menacing glares at me, alternating between concerned and angry. Meanwhile, Vespera was planning something evil.
"As a punishment for not following the plan, we could force him to heal only using his Vitality and see how long it takes," she said.
The angel was quick to agree. Not very angelic.
"It is for the sake of knowledge, Sol mine," she said.
"Aww, how cute, you called him Sol mine."
I crossed my arms at Vespera. "Yeah, but she did it while agreeing with your punishment methods, though!"
The demon didn't seem to find it strange nor worthy of mention. In any case, it took me ten minutes for the wound to stop stinging, and a few more to heal up enough to be able to fight again.
Elyra was thoughtful. When I asked her, she said that it was too fast. If stats were multipliers applied to the base rate of a normal person, then I should heal 11.5 times faster than normal. Given that it took me around fifteen minutes for my leg to be almost totally fixed, that should be equivalent to something just shy of three hours of normal healing.
"As I said, too fast."
Vespera was not concerned. To her, the simple explanation was: Magic. And that was it.
"I suppose it could be that the stats synergize with other body processes," I said, "and that the result is greater than just taking a normal unaugmented regeneration and slapping a multiplier to it."
It reminded me of the Green in my old life. The thought traveled through the bond, and it gave Elyra some food for thought.
"None of that, now," the demon said, snapping her fingers. "We have more wolves to fight. Chop chop!"
By the end of the day, I wasn't good at switching weapons and handling the sword, but I was decent. It being weightless didn't mean that I could just swing it around however I wished, and I learned that the feature made it all too easy to hurt myself, or cut up the ground in front of my feet. My strength and the sword's zero weight meant that I could cut up entire chunks of soil, dirt and stones and then stumble into a hole of my own making if I didn't pay enough attention. The sword being almost as tall as me meant that the hole was also deep.
We retreated back inside the area protected by the tree and counted our spoils. 36 cores and wolf corpses, although the latter were in various states of obliteration. Some of them were little more than masses of flesh—Vespera's fault—while others were almost perfectly intact—usually Elyra's.
"And now the fun part," I announced. "Girls?"
They took my hands in theirs, and we opened ourselves to the bond. Our stats blended, our minds linked, and three mana pools became unified into one.
"You want to do the honors?" I said, nodding at the pile of corpses. "My hands are tied."
I lifted my hands, lifting theirs up in turn, which made Elyra smile and Vespera roll her eyes. Outside of those very rare situations when the angel was mad at me, she really liked my antics in a pure and wholesome way. Vespera liked them too, but in the polar opposite way of someone capable of the same kind of humor and snappiness being forced to be served her own medicine.
They each used their free hand to point their palm at the corpses, and I finally cast the skill. With our minds linked, I felt them touch the skill as well, their minds brushing against the invisible trigger switch that the System provided for its active skills. None of it surprised them, of course. Elyra was already accustomed to hopping over to my mind, casting [Navigational Ping] and then retreating before we could even notice.
Light enveloped the bodies, and the skill began to drain mana from our shared pool.
"How much?" Vespera asked.
"All of it, of course!" I replied immediately.
"Leave a little bit," Elyra countered.
"Yessir!" I said in mock salute.
The light from the skill went from white, to iridescent, to rainbow. We stopped it when our pool reached around ten percent, but even then, this was the most mana we ever pumped into [Matter Reclamation].
Before the fireworks even ended, the System slammed us with a level up window.
General Skill level up!
[Matter Reclamation] 2 → 3
Insufficient energy.
Vespera was the first to react. "Quick! Go fetch some cores!"
I broke into a run while she and Elyra kept their hands on the glowing pile of bodies. When I reached the pile of wolf cores, I touched the first one I got my hands on. It crumbled into dust, but it wasn't enough. I touched another. Then another. More followed.
Finally, the System had its fill.
[Matter Reclamation] 2 → 3
The skill finished its work on the bodies, and the light faded. The girls let go of a breath they didn't even know they were holding. Approaching from behind, I noticed how they were completely distracted by the results of the skill use. I was too, of course, but I had the opportunity to have some fun and I couldn't pass up on it.
"Yip!" Elyra cried out, jumping forward and almost falling face first into the transmutated wolf meat. "Sol!" she shrieked.
Vespera giggled. "Oh, now you've done it."
I laughed, then had to jump back when the angel began to chase me. I thought I was safe, but suddenly her wings glowed and a gale of wind knocked me backwards. I stumbled, and she caught up with me, straddling me and pinning me to the ground.
Now, to be clear, we all knew I could free myself with my raw strength. But why would I want to remove a cute, flustered angel whose ass I had just pinched from being right on top of me? Besides, the way her wings still glowed with expended magic in the fading light of day was majestic, and it contrasted nicely with her red, blushing cheeks.
Hearing my thoughts, she blushed even harder. I used the opening to tickle her.
"Asshole," she muttered after she managed to calm down.
"Well, I made you discover a new magic, didn't I?"
She paused. "Oh. The wings! I… Sol! My wings! They work!"
She crashed into me like a meteor. I had barely had time to get up from the ground before we fell back down again in a heap, with her showering me with kisses and hugging me tightly.
"I love you, Sol. I love you. I love you. I love you!"
"Elyra?" Vespera asked. She had walked over, concerned. "What's going on?"
"I thought you would understand," she said, sniffling with happiness. "I thought… I thought my wings were… were… I thought they were broken, Vespera! I had them, but they barely even did anything."
The demon frowned. "So that's what's been bothering you since we talked about wings and all."
We could all feel it, through the bond, but Elyra had kept the details as hidden as she could. And we had not pried, choosing to give her space. Sharing everything was nice and all, but it got old fast unless you knew how to set and respect boundaries. Fortunately, being so in sync as we were, we all understood that intuitively.
"But it makes no sense," the demon argued. "You used your wings to redirect your momentum back in the crystal cave, when you were carrying Sol to the other side and were all flustered at having him so close to you. I remember it! I was so green with envy!"
"I was not flustered!" the angel protested. "And… yes. But that was the extent of it. It was a titanic effort to just barely affect my direction and speed. I thought I could never fly, or use more magic. I was… wrong!"
She broke down in happy tears again, and we all hugged her.
"You are not broken," I whispered in her ear. Beside me, Vespera was looking at us, pretending to be unaffected. "And neither are you. I don't know if it's the bond, all the practice, or the level up, but you're both becoming more of yourselves. You'll see. This is just the beginning."
The demon hummed. "You may be right, spacer boy. I guess I gotta experiment with my own magic some more. It's unfair that angel lady here gets all the nice power-ups."
"I saw you fight the wolves," I said. "You were much, much stronger than before."
"But I want cool new tricks," she said, smiling with her fangs. "I have been neglecting the more magicky parts of my magic lately. Who knows? Maybe I got a new trick or two as well. Elyra already has shields, beams and now wind. I only got claws."
It was reductive, of course. Both she and Elyra could do more than just that with magic. They both could cleanse themselves, for instance. And their approaches were different. Vespera already could make small objects disintegrate like she did the grime on her body. And Elyra, well. She had a scientific mind.
"Lots of things to do, it seems," the demon said. "Good, I dislike being bored. Now come on, let's see what we got out of the wolves."
"No," Elyra said, panting. The way she looked up and down at me made me feel like prey.
"Uh, what's going on?" I asked.
Vespera too looked concerned. "Is she… mad?"
"Strip," the angel commanded. Turning her head, she locked eyes with Calyx. "You, leave."
The dryad vanished inside his tree. The moment he was gone, Elyra was back on top of me like she had been when I was tickling her. It was her breath that tickled me, however, and I felt her body heat. She was scalding, what with all the exercise we did hunting the wolves, and with her own excitement. A little furnace of lust, she was.
"Vespera," Elyra said, her face red and her breath coming in short hiccups. "Go… go fetch the…"
The demon grinned. "Ohh. Interesting. The what, pray tell?"
"The condoms," she blurted out. "I am waiting no longer. Sol, I love you."
Her voice was tender right there at the end, before she stole my lips with hers. I smiled when we broke apart to breathe. "I love you too, little angel mine."
"I want to prove it to you, just how much I love you. I have been waiting for the perfect time, and I cannot think of a better moment than now. I am giving you something precious, Sol. Something that can only be given once. Will you be my first and only, my love?"
I thought Vespera would be jealous, but rather she was the opposite. Beneath her facade of calm teasing, she was burning red, feeding our desires, impatient perhaps even more so than us.
"Yes, Elyra," I said. "And you, will you be my first?"
"YES!"
---
CHAPTER 52.5 NSFW preview
With the way Elyra was all over me, I didn't even notice Vespera leaving. The sun was setting, casting long shadows and bathing the two of us in orange and gold light. We were too busy to appreciate any of that, of course.
My precious little angel was showering me with kisses, frantically repeating "I love you! I love you!" while trying to kiss every single part of my body.
Her hands clumsily tugged at my clothes, trying to remove them and making us roll in the soft tall grass around the tree. I was doing the same, pulling at her clothes that were getting stuck everywhere. I removed her plastic raincoat, then my hands went to her shirt. It got stuck in her wings, covering her face.
I decided to get playful and began to tickle her while she was trapped. She giggled, trying to mount a counter-offensive and failing. Then I reached the base of her wings, and her giggles turned into moans.
"Oh, Sol," she said heavily. "I love it when you touch me there."
I scritched her skin and touched her wings. The glassy feathers were soft and cool, but they also trapped the warmth of my hand and made it feel scalding hot after a few moments there. I enjoyed the strange sensation, burying my fingers in the softness, making Elyra moan even harder. It was the first time I really dug into her wings with my hands, and I found no bones nor anything that wasn't soft feathers.
"Ruffle them," she said needily. "I want you to be rougher."
"Do you now?" I asked, pulling her close and biting her ear.
I grabbed a fistful of her feathers. They had some give, like they were held in place by forcefields rather than flesh. I ruffled them, going against the grain, moving up and down. She screamed in pleasure, slobbering kisses all over my neck, biting me and drooling over me.
"Sol," she called. I did not stop what I was doing, but gave her some space to look me in the eyes.
"Yes, my love?"
She melted when I said that. Her brown eyes were deep, misty and pleading. They were full of love and carnal lust. She inhaled, as if to speak, then thought better of it and buried her tongue in my mouth. She moaned while she kissed me, seeking my tongue, then retreating and letting me chase her into her mouth.
She was so hot and wet. Saliva drooled all over our faces. She, like Vespera, was a veritable fountain of fluids from all orifices when she got excited. I loved it.
"You taste so sweet," I told her.
"Spit in my mouth too," she requested. "I want to taste you too."
I gathered my saliva and then grabbed her wings, nails digging into her back as I pulled her to me and forced her lips open with mine. I knew she loved it, and I felt her heart thump in her chest. Through the bond, a flood of pleasure was coming from her, a supernova of lust and excitement.
I felt Vespera return, but we didn't pay her any mind. Poor demon, forced to watch from the sidelines. But then a new source of lust hit us, like a tide of horniness, and we laughed. She had stripped and was already masturbating while watching us.
"Do go on," she said, not removing her fingers from deep inside her pussy.
She fished them out, and they came back drenched in her fluids.
We turned back to each other, though, letting her have her fun. I kept kissing my angel, while at the same time undoing her bindings to free her marvelous boobs. Meanwhile, her delicate hands had gone in search of my cock, clumsy and desperate. They found it and gripped it with so much strength it almost hurt, as if scared it was going to disappear on her.
[Continues on Patreon. (this is a 3k+ chapter)]