"Woah," Vespera exclaimed. "No shit [Matter Reclamation] reached level three. Look at all this stuff!"
We had gotten a bit… sidetracked earlier, and night had fallen on us. Fortunately, the darkness wasn't too much of a problem when you had an angel with halo and wings capable of emitting light.
"Heh," the demon giggled. "She really is glowing after what you did to her earlier. I wonder if I'll glow too."
I could feel that she was still a bit sad she didn't get to develop any new powers, unlike Elyra. At least she wasn't jealous I gave all the attention to the angel earlier. I was fine with her wanting power and not wanting to be left behind, and even with a bit of sane rivalry. But it would suck big time if my two girls started being jealous of each other.
"He's thinking about us in a cute way again," Elyra said, nudging Vespera with her elbow.
The demon cooed and caressed my arm. "My big, strong, scatter-brained spacer boy who can't focus on one thing for the life of him. And he totally misunderstood what I meant by glowing. Or, were you being intentionally dense? I know you were. You can't hide things from us, Sol Nightguard."
I glared at her. "Wanna throw hands?"
She gasped. "That's my line!"
I smirked.
"Whatever, weirdo. What are we going to do with all this stuff?" she asked.
The skill we used on the pile of wolf bodies had been fed nearly all of our mana, and had once again outdone itself. I mean, we had leveled up again and both girls got boosts in their mana capacity, which meant that the mana going into the skill this time had been truly enormous.
There was no trace of the wolves anymore, replaced by rows upon rows of meats, perfectly cleaned claws and teeth, and pelts. The cuts of meat looked delicious, and there were so many that we couldn't even begin to fathom eating all of them ourselves.
A strange mist wafted from them, clinging to their vicinity like a bubble.
"They are refrigerated," I said as the sudden realization hit me. Indeed, they weren't even touching the ground as not to get contaminated!
"That's it," Vespera said. "Your skill is busted."
"Our skill," I corrected her, making her smile warmly at me.
I thought about mana again. Thanks to the bond I knew that with each new level, Elyra got a big boost to mana capacity and a small one to regeneration, meaning a lot of WIS and some INT, while Vespera was the opposite. We couldn't see their statuses, but we sort of knew from experimentation and feelings.
It fit their respective fighting styles, and even their personalities. The demon was quick witted and even quicker mouthed, while the angel was more measured. At least, normally. Sometimes their roles switched.
"Well," Vespera continued. "Even though them meats might not spoil immediately, I'm still famished and they looks delicious. How about we make a fire and cook more than we could possibly eat and throw a feast? I'm getting Calyx. I'm sure he will enjoy it too. Oh! And we need the ambrosia!"
With that, she left without waiting for an answer. Not that she needed one. She knew what we were thinking and if that weren't enough, my stomach growled as I salivated at the thought of eating tons of wolf meat. I didn't even know if it should look this good, honestly. I had seen pictures of wagyu steaks, and this looked even more inviting than even them.
I was pretty sure magic was at play here. Elyra agreed, although her attention wasn't as much on the food as ours was. Two people filling the bond with thoughts of barbecue were more than enough, she reckoned.
Instead, she was more interested in the many vials that lay on the ground near the pelts.
I could hear her thoughts as if they were in my head.
This is not glass, she mused as she tapped one of the vials. It gave her a little electric zap that didn't hurt, but made her wing feathers stand up a little bit.
It must be magic. Perhaps solid-state coalesced mana!
I smiled at her joyful excitement. She really loved discovering new things, and already she was thinking about all sorts of experiments. However, I was not the only one who could be a bit scatterbrained. With too many things calling for her attention, the little angel soon became distracted. Now she was focusing on the many labels on the vials and bottles.
Bone marrow dust, blood essence, wolfium bits… what are wolfium bits?
I shrugged. She didn't pay me any mind and instead went to study the corks on some of the bottles. They were made of actual cork, and were much more solid than the glass-like mana manifestation of the containers.
But it too must be summoned, she thought. It was not here when we cast the skill! Is the dryad tree dented? No. Then where did it take all the material… organic stuff? Grass? No! The grass is whole! Then where???
I could see that the mystery was driving her insane. I heard giggles coming from the direction of the tree, and saw Vespera emerge with Calyx in tow, carrying ambrosia and enough supplies to cook up a feast, just like she had promised.
"Should we pull her away from there before she gets completely lost in her head?" I asked the demon while we prepared the fire.
"Nah," she said. "You'll see, spacer boy. The moment she smells all that hellish meat cooking…"
It took me for a spin that she used the word hellish just like anyone else would use the word heavenly, but…
She hopped over to my mind.
◈◈◈
We are together now. She sits next to me, like I am piloting the hauler while she is fiddling with the computer screens in the passenger seat. She could put on some music, or play a movie or a game. Instead, she navigates to the database interfaces and pulls out a neural jack. When she plugs in, the sensation is akin to an itch inside my skull that reverberates all around and makes the whole ship wobble.
The ship is our shared mind, while she and I are the consciousnesses inside. Elyra is here too, and she's also jacked up. It's a different kind of jack from the one Vespera is using. The angel is piloting a sister ship, her own body, from an alcove further back near the bed bunks.
Interesting. Following the analogy, I look outside through the many windows and spot the two ships. Elyra's is easy to find, and its spinning in space and going for loops all around us, all excited. The other is dark and streaked with red, it's Vespera's body. It's flying in a straight line, following the hauler's path but without a pilot it's not doing much.
I feel Vespera rummage inside the database. As I was saying, it already contains everything all three of us know, but having all within reach doesn't mean that all comes to mind at any time. It's like browsing a database, you need to know where you are looking. Each of us is more accustomed to their own section of the database.
She finally finds the way to do what she wanted and sends me a data packet.
I am now Vespera, for a moment. It's a memory. I see the meat, and I salivate. I try to concentrate on the sensation of hunger rather than everything else, because the demon's body is loud as hell like usual, and she's very horny all the time. It's very distracting.
I try again. I see the meat, I salivate and think: oh, that shit must be HELLISH to eat.
I am back in the pilot seat of the hauler. Vespera removes her neural jack and winks at me. "Cool place you got here," she says, then she goes to sit near Elyra and plugs back into her ship.
Alone, I return to reality and the ship fades from around me.
◈◈◈
I blinked. Ah, well. Now I understood her point of view, I guess.
The meat sizzled on a makeshift griddle made of pure darkness. Vespera was tinkering with it, frowning as she moved the various cuts around. She had been very proud and smug when she managed to coerce her magic into becoming a griddle of billowing shadows and red streaks, but the smugness did not last long once she learned that the darkness did not conduct heat at all.
It was a reverse griddle. Rather than cooking and searing the meat where it touched the bars, creating neat lines of perfect crispness, it did the opposite.
"Fucking Maillon's reaction," she muttered. "I'm cracking this if it's the last thing I do."
It was Maillard, I think. Maillard's reaction. Something I only got to experience once or twice in my old life, and never with real meat—only lab-grown. They swore it tasted the same as actual meat, but already the smell coming from the perfect cuts of wolf on the grill told me it was bullshit. Or that this meat was leagues above anything a commercial zero-g lab could grow.
While Vespera did her things, Elyra was packing my backpack to the brim with all the vials, bottles and miscellanea that the transmutation skill had produced from the wolves.
"I think most of them should be alchemical ingredients," she said when I walked over. "I tried to study the magic, but I cannot see it. It vexes me to no end, for some reason."
Her eyes shimmered with blue light for a second and I got the idea. She thought she should be able to see magic, but couldn't. Maybe it was another angelic trait she still had not manifested? Well, if manifesting it made her eyes glow blue… damn.
"In any case," she cut me off, blinking away a lone tear. "I think the magic of the bottles also keeps the reagents in stasis. It will not remain forever, but it should last long enough to make a trip to the city. There, we could ask Lee to take a look."
She blinked, looking at me with puppy eyes. "If you…" she began. "If you are okay with this…"
"None of that," I said sternly. She looked at me, lost. I took her hands and pulled her close, still a bit forceful, but I knew what she liked. Her blush confirmed that I was right. "You can play pretend all you want when we do naughty things together," I told her. "And it's very cute that you like pretending to be submissive while also wanting to get your way all the time. But when we are not doing those things, when we are not pretending, I will never degrade you, disrespect you, or in any way shape or form order you around. Do you understand?"
Her eyes sparkled with little stars. Gosh, she was so beautiful. She placed a delicate hand on my cheek and gave me a shy, little kiss.
"I love you, Sol," she said in a small voice before turning back to her nerdy study and packing.
From behind, a loud "YES!" told us that Vespera had made a breakthrough.
Good. I was looking forward to wolf wagyu.