We had, surprisingly after the last few hectic days, some free time to unwind and relax.
"Crazy," Vespera said. "What's crazier is that we haven't had sex in four days. SOL! It's time we fix this."
I booped her nose, and she blinked, stammering some incoherent words. It was like I had hit her reset button. "Later, you horny teenager."
"I'm not a teen! I'm fifteen millennia old!" she complained.
"A hag, then," Zery declared.
"You!" the demon roared.
While they bickered, I let my mind wander. Our first major event was going to be meeting with Brigitte Slyzarik, since she had wanted to meet with us before agreeing to be our guide in our quest to retrieve the ritual book. Then there was the marriage ceremony, which would inevitably end with a mess so big we'd need to leave the city or Ted was going to explode trying to handle it and us at the same time.
"I miss the easier times," Elyra said quietly. She walked beside me, and I reached for her hand and squeezed it. "I am happy there are so many of us now, but… the world feels so much more chaotic now."
"I get it," I said. "Don't you also like the new developments, though?"
She blushed when she noticed my eyes going to her collar. "Of course I do but… How about we take it easy for a while?"
Zery perked up. I felt a flurry of Bond speech between her and Calla, and then she turned to me, eyes shining. "How about a picnic?"
"That's a great idea! Let's do it, spacer boy!" Vespera said, jumping around with excited energy. "We stuffed our new bag of holding full of food after all. How about we eat through a third of it as a uhhhhh… inauguration. Yes! We spent so much on that bag, it deserves an inauguration!"
I chuckled. "We spent more than half our cash on that bag."
Bib had been right. We weren't rich by adventurer standards. Because real adventurers, apparently, were those a rank higher than you were, no matter what rank you were at the time, and you were just a silly little broke worker, looking up at the good times that were yet to come when you'd be stronger and a rank higher. Rinse and repeat, except each time the money required for gear increased exponentially.
"Come onnnn, we are not eating the bag! Just the food inside!" Vespera complained.
When I saw her pleading eyes, a trick she stole from Calla, no doubt, I knew I couldn't say no.
"Alright," I conceded. "We fought monsters for three days, we can spend an afternoon doing some sweet nothing."
"Yay!"
"This is bliss," Vespera said as she lounged with her head resting between Zery's legs.
She was practically glowing, and not just because of her recent half-evolution. Rather, the picnic had quickly gotten heated, and we ended up tumbling in the grass in a tangle of limbs, messy bodies and overwhelming pleasure.
"Sometimes, normal sex is just the thing we need," she said. Sighing contently, she massaged her belly and thought about the future, smiling sultrily at me. "And one day…"
Above us, fluffy white clouds raced through the sky, chased by some bigger and darker ones that never seemed to be able to catch them, held back by their pregnant weight of rain.
"Heh," Elyra said, half chuckling, half daydreaming. I knew the strange descriptor word couldn't have come from me. Indeed, her thoughts were infecting me. I loved it. "How come the clouds get their wish, and we do not?"
"We are not trying hard enough," Zery declared, grabbing me and pulling me close to her. "Right, Sol ours?"
I smiled at her, admiring her face. "I'm surely not against trying harder, as you know."
"Good," she said. She had not participated directly in the previous round, but by the looks of it she fully intended to rectify that.
Our faces leaned closer to each other, and I smelled the sea salt and slightly chill breeze of her skin. Her face was still wet with perspiration from earlier, but it had cooled down in the early fall air so that touching her with my lips was an experience so special I could never get enough of it.
As we broke apart, I felt the shy touch of her forked tongue give me a quick, playful lick. When we kissed again, though, there was nothing shy or playful anymore. Our lust took over, and soon we were all tumbling in the grass again.
Later, as the sun was setting, we decided to take the long way back to our little slice of the world, where the tree and its shield granted us a place we could call ours. Following the guild token's map, which we upgraded with the more expensive subscription, we found monsters and practiced our tactics. Their energy, thanks to Eve's presence in the Bond, could be automatically absorbed and redistributed without the need to tediously deliver the cores in person, and we decided unanimously that it should all go to Vespera, in an attempt to finalize her Race Evolution into the next tier of demon.
The more we fought, the more the song of our Bond intensified and deepened, touching our very being. It was like our souls were in harmony, a connection brought by the silent dance of focus and combat, which, of course, left us energetic and horny after we were done, so we rushed back to our underground haven to have some more fun before the self-imposed obligations of the real world could interrupt us.
We really were like horny teens, although again the sex was intimate and filled with love like it had been during the picnic, our yearning for each other making the almost boring things we did feel more exciting than even the kinkiest positions one could imagine.
By the looks of the girls, though, I knew that they would soon want to again push the boundaries of what we did when we got frisky. I could see it in their eyes, and the Bond bleed-through of personality and desires had Vespera look at Elyra's collar with longing.
I thought about giving her one, but paused. Maybe a choker rather than a collar? And… I was going to do it, but when the time was right.
"Still a Demon," Vespera said, pouting.
It was morning, although we could lounge on our gigantic bed all day and not notice, since our room was underground, lit by light-crystals and the soft glow of the draconic core powering the System behind us.
"Don't worry," I said, massaging her wings and making her moan in pleasure. "We'll find the missing piece. If it's not energy, then it has to be something else."
That's when we felt Eve stir. At once, the girls squealed with glee and we all rushed to the mindspace we shared together.
There, time is different, the book of our memories is open for all of us, and the Bond is deeper than ever.
"Eve!" says Elyra, rushing to meet the new girl. "You are…"
But then she collides with her before she can finish what she was saying, and with a muted oof realizes that Eve is tangible now, fully solid.
"You are here, with us," I finish for her.
We are all varying degrees of surprised, happy, and emotional. This feels like a huge moment. Last time, she had manifested for all of two seconds before disappearing on us, and she had pretty much napped ever since with only a few moments of waking just to give us what little help she could. Now, I can sense her ship more solid than ever outside, in the strange existence of our Bond-space.
It still looks like a hologram, and so does Eve, but both are also solid. The girl who is also the System is all digital greens, like the strange old-looking computer displays of the dryadic age we found in the various System rooms.
That's where the similarities end, though. Other than the color, she is nothing like the old relics of tech we found. She is a tall, slender girl with perfect lifelike details. Her skin is electric, and I find myself inexplicably close to her, touching her, looking her in the eyes, losing myself in the deep orbs of green upon green, neon lights of tangible existence that zap my skin in pleasant tingles.
She is neither hot nor cold, but her touch warms me nonetheless, the electric contact making sparks between us.
"Hello, Eve," I say, and our faces are so close I can smell the ozone where her existence electrifies the air.
"Hello, star of my life," she says softly, her voice slightly computerish in a strange, half-analog, half digital way that has fallen into obscurity by the time I was alive in my old life.
She looks down, and when she notices that I am holding her hands, a soft smile creeps onto her face and tugs at her lips. She and I are the same height, although her slender and athletic frame makes her feel smaller than she is. We interlock our fingers together, and then I pull her to me. Our embrace is tight, needy, and our thoughts finally become one.
"You are in the Bond now," I tell her.
She blinks when I let her go, her hands still gripping mine as if scared that letting go will unmoor her from space and time and make her drift aimlessly in the vast void of Bond-space. But no. I can hear her thoughts and her fears, and it isn't just me either. The others are here, with us in body, soul, and mind.
"Can you feel them?" I ask her.
She blinks again, and a little tangle of green hololines falls down her cheeks to splash on the floor of my hauler, disintegrating into flying pixels like a million tiny fireflies.
"You are all here with me…" she says softly.
"And you are here with us," I tell her. "It's real. It's all real. You are not alone anymore."
She looks up at me with her impossibly gorgeous eyes. She is so strange, so alien, and yet I feel an attraction to her I can't explain. The others watch us with warm encouragement, which we can both feel within us.
Eve resists for a moment, but then she gives in and her arms wrap around my neck and pull me to her, where my lips meet hers and we explode in a shower of fireworks and sparks, making the whole hauler ignite and its lights flicker. And our tongues explore each other's mouths, while the hauler fills itself with proof that Eve is really here with us, decorations of strange neon patterns appearing alongside what the other girls have left here as irrefutable proof that they are mine and I am theirs.
We are six now. Inseparable.
We break the kiss, but only reluctantly, with the promise of more to come.
"I can't believe I kissed the System," I mutter.
Eve pouts and gives me the stink eye, before showing me her tongue and rushing to the commander's seat of the hauler, giggling all the while. I stare in surprise, and it is Zery's laughter that breaks me out of my reverie.
"I like her a lot already," she says, then gives Elyra a wink. "Good call adding her to the Bond."
"Sol!" Eve calls impatiently, her smile big and radiant. "Come! Look!"
She points at the screens. For a moment, I think I see the kill code there again, but then it is gone with no hint that anyone else has seen it.
Eve is pointing at a diagram of Vespera's… body? Magic? Something.
"You are silly," she says, booping me on the nose. "If you hadn't chosen stats at the last level-up, she would have finished evolving already! Now you will have to wait until the next level!"