The next week was a very, very good one despite me making a single mistake that ended up having a drastic consequence that I really should have seen coming. More on that later, but for now I’ll focus on the good.

First off I’ll just mention that the Breeding Tribe hasn’t been in town. We’ve been keeping an eye out for it every day but it could still be a few weeks out.   

I ended up talking to Zutiria about some of the teleportation issues I’d been dwelling on. How I wanted to eventually set up a direct deposit to the Association of Adventurers HQ so that we could warp items directly to them on our own without having to rely on a mail mage and the usual delays that involves.

Unfortunately, she told me that this kind of long distance warping is way too advanced for her in her limited state of power. There’s a thing about teleportation magic that just makes it so much more difficult than other schools of magecraft. I’ve read about it in the past, but she gave me a fairly detailed breakdown. Something about while you can break down and move an item through distorting reality and shortening the distance between the destination and the starting point, doing the same thing to a living being without ripping it into tiny chunks and scattering them over the realms is much harder.

The other thing about teleportation magic is that it’s generally accepted that you HAVE to be a Mage for it to work. That’s why only Mages use the Warp Stone network, the thing Zutiria used to travel all the way from Imperalis to Dewhurst in a single day. All major cities have one, and they’re an integral part of Karnalle’s society in this day and age since they can warp a mage and a small amount of luggage instantly provided they’re skilled enough to utilize them. But the fact that only Mages can use the Warp Stone network is a very limiting feature.

This got her thinking, though, and I learned that when you really get Zutiria thinking you end up with incredible results.

She complained to me that we’d get a lot more done if they could warp back to the Guild after completing a task and with no context asked me for 5,000G. That was kind of a lot, but she reminded me that I promised to buy her any magical knick knacks she asks for while living with me instead of getting her Quest payment. So I couldn’t refuse.

What she did with that money was astonishing, and I’ve never heard of anything like it.

Zutiria came back later that day with Sam carrying about as many bags as a standard shopping trip with Opalina, though unlike me she didn’t seem worn out by the affair thanks to her strength. There were a lot of magical ingredients and supplies that I had no idea what the hell they were for. Reading a couple of books on the subject doesn’t make you an alchemist by any means.

She then sent Sam and myself to fetch as many rocks as we could, and although bewildered by the request it’s not like I was going to refuse my little doll her rocks if she wanted them. When we returned I found that Zutiria had moved a table off of the center left wall of the entrance hall and marked it off with chalk.

Sam and I gave her the rocks and in return she showed me an absurd amount of magical diagrams and advanced theories that I couldn’t make a lick of sense out of... but she told me it didn’t matter as long as I trusted her. I do.

Zutiria ended up using her magic to create a circular, raised platform made of stone which she apparently crafted using the rocks broken down and shaped using her magic’s influence. I asked why she couldn’t have just made the stones herself, but she explained how it needed to be rocks from the actual earth around this general area. Sam and I looked at each other and shrugged it off as being too complicated for us to comprehend.

The little mage ended up spending a few hours creating some sort of glowing magical paint which she used to cover the upper most platform in arcane symbols and a bulky magic circle in the center. It’s really, really complex looking. I wonder if she’s a good artist in general? It takes skill to paint such an impressive looking sigil.

When I finally deigned to ask what this all was, she shushed me and explained that it was almost done and that she needed a spare room to focus in. I led her to a dusty little storage room and asked if it would be alright, and she called it satisfactory despite the rough state it was in. Zutiria then moved in her remaining alchemy supplies one by one and without asking me went and stole a number of pots, pans and flasks from the kitchen.

I have to admit, this new side of hers is beyond adorable, despite the kitchenware casualties.

Watching Zutiria running around to and fro doing weird little magic things that only she understands is super cute. When we have more gold I would love to transform this room into an actual alchemy lab for her, but that’s... going to be a major investment so we’ll see how it goes.

When her homebrew station was all set up, she very politely kicked Sam and I out of the room and locked the door on us. After that, the Princess and I had some sexual fun for a few hours while routinely checking in on the little mage. The door wouldn’t open and she didn’t respond when we knocked, but the lights coming from under the door would flash a multitude of magical colors every now and then so we took it as a sign just to check back later.

Eventually, Zutiria burst out of the room unexpectedly. Although her face was as cold as ever a hint of a smile could be seen lifting up the corners of her mouth. She then explained the next step in her master plan.

‘My calculations are not perfect. I’ve narrowed the correct ingredient mixing rate down to two possible solutions, however, so we’ll try them both before I mass produce my creation. One of them will work flawlessly and the other will work, but have an unexpected consequence. I’m not quite sure what it’ll be yet.’ Zutiria tells us.

I was definitely intrigued but very, very skeptical of whatever this all was. Zutiria displayed two tiny pellets and explained that she and Sam would head out to the outskirts of Dewhurst and throw them on the ground to see which one worked. I had a feeling I knew what they were going to do, but I couldn’t imagine how.

I know Zutiria is incredibly skilled, but... she can’t have actually created a work around towards one of the hardest magical abilities in a single day, right? Of course that’s what all of this ended up being but at that moment in time it was impossible to guess that was the case.

Sitting around waiting in the Guild for them was a very difficult thing to do when I was so afraid of the dangers, but Sam is fearless and stupid and Zutiria wouldn’t take no for an answer. After over a half hour of waiting I was stunned to see the magic runes and circle of the stone platforms shining a brilliant blue light, filling the air of the Guild with an intense mana pressure that only I could feel.

Boom.

Suddenly, Sam was back at the center of the platform with a stunned look on her face. She jumps off it and looks around, unable to believe her own eyes. I don’t blame her.

Before I can ask if anything is wrong and if her item was the defective one, the mana pressure and accompanying lightshow started up once again signaling that the little lady was on her way.

Boom, again.

Zutiria stands atop the stone platform with a triumphant look on her delicate face. A look that fades as soon as she realizes her clothes, hat, glasses and staff apparently did not make the transition with her and her invention only teleported herself in the nude, complete with an equally naked Little Sir standing on top of her head.

Now, the little lady has never been outright shy or embarrassed in the short time that I’ve known her, but she took this a little bad. I think Zutiria was super excited to show off her amazing new invention and have me praise her for it, but it ruined her moment of truth and made her cry with a blushing face.

Sam volunteered to run and go get her best friend’s gear, which had presumably been left behind in the field, while I stayed here to comfort the successful sorceress. She calmed down quickly enough and explained to me how all this worked. The little pellets were something she called ‘Returners’ and they were made of ground up rocks mixed with the same paint solution on the magic circle. The user could throw it on the ground and they and everything in the area of the original magic circle would be transported back to the Guild... as long as they were within a certain distance.

She emphasized that the ‘Return Gate’ as she called it will only work within Dewhurst and a radius of a few miles outside of town. She’s not sure how just yet, but she’s confident with more funds she can eventually increase the range and even perhaps design a more efficient model. Zutiria also assures me the Returners are very cheap to produce and she probably has enough ingredients leftover to make several hundred of the little pellets.

As great as these things are, there were a few caveats. It’s best to not use it on more than one human at a time, although apparently a person and a hitchhiking rat is fine. Zutiria warned that even if say... someone else's arm was in the area of effect when throwing a Returner at the ground, the results would not be pretty... The implication is very clear. This also means that two people shouldn’t throw a Returner at the exact same time or they might ‘teleport over top of each other’ as she puts it. Not something I ever want to see.

This changes everything. The girls can get even more quests done in a day, they can send back monster corpses for easier processing and we could even start harvesting more parts from them and selling them in town for extra gold on top of the kill quest rewards. No more hunting wild potion ingredients, this extra income will make that all but irrelevant.

The monster corpses won’t run a risk of teleporting on top of each other either since Zutiria assures that since they aren’t ‘living’ at that point they are treated the same as objects- easy to warp. She says it's safe for several of them to get piled up on each other back at the Guild, but we should eventually have someone on standby to keep the Return Gate free of clutter when we start getting decent amounts of stuff. She also mentioned the possibility of building another Return Gate specifically for monsters and other treasures, but we’d need to make a lot of preparation for such a big addition to the Guild.

What I’m most happy about with this system, though, is the fact that it gives my girls a last option of sorts. If they can’t handle a monster and they’re in range, they can get the hell out of there before they lose their life. Something like the Brood Wolf incident will never happen again, and it’s all thanks to Zutiria...

I will never get over how much of a genius my little mage is. I offhandedly mention that I’d like it if she could use teleportation magic, and in a single day she creates a solution to a problem that has plagued generations upon generations of mages. She found a way to teleport non mages, even if it’s in a very specific way with a lot of conditions as well as a certain element of danger if used improperly.

That’s astonishing, and I reward Zutiria by sending Sam over for a sleepover with Opalina and lavishing attention on her nonstop for the entire night. I fucked her tiny body within an inch of her life, and we both practically collapsed on each other and snuggled the night away. The next morning Sam came back with an incredibly wide, pervy look on her face and two bags of leftovers so I think it’s safe to say everyone was a winner that night.

So yeah, that was how the week started off.