Chapter 79

 

I was sweating bullets on how to thwart the dwarves from discovering the daemon DNA affecting Asakura when an unlikely answer appeared out of nowhere.

We had been out of ideas and scared stupid about being discovered, until Rina accidentally saved the day with a new idea. She found a spiked collar of some kind among the salvaged equipment. Weird, but it was our only option since it seems that Asakura’s mind is clearly still a puddle of jelly.

I was against it until she attached some rope to it and saw how clearly it resembled a spiked dog collar on a leash. At first I wasn’t sure what she was making. After getting it together in its final form it looks like the pieces belong together. The frayed aspect of the rope seems to add to the effect of looking real and fitting the image of an odd couple with strange sex practices, according to Rina.

I ignored that she was winking at me during that time. She wanted me to put it on Asakura. Of course she suggests she should try it out first, but I recognized that for the trap it is and shot that idea down. It seems it’s like a domination kit in the form of a leash and collar I finally realized.

She wants me to play like she’s my pet openly? At first I didn’t get it. How was that going to help?

Hearing that made my ears burn in shame, but its better if the dwarves think we’re sexual deviants than that I’m some sex demon like creature that has infected a ‘glamorous’ human girl. They’d try to save her and kill me if they suspected that. It would also be a very painful death since it would be a very heinous way of stirring up the locals.

We argued back and forth about it for quite a while before I gave in but there was just no clear alternative. But in the end Rina won the argument and has this terrifying look of obsession. She’s good at making things happen after all. Sometimes she can put up good arguments too. She argued that the best place to hide is in plain sight. If we make the dwarves think we’re crazy pranksters in some kind of sex domination game they won’t suspect something is wrong with Asakura.

I think I wish I could roll over in my grave right now.

But about Rina suggesting this; she’s totally bat shit too I think. Seriously? Who comes up with a plan like that on the fly with no preparation unless she had weird ideas in there to begin with?

I hung my head low when I couldn’t say anything against this particular one. It’s too weird. I’m just glad my mom isn’t here because that would make my shame too great to bear. I protested many times again, still not understanding why it would work but nothing good came out of it. I was against it morally. I can’t believe I’m doing this. It’s stupid and I think it’s demeaning to women too. But Rina makes a good submissive.

That’s when I realize the brilliance of the plan.

The idea is they are faked out by Rina doing this game first! Rina has me test it on herself in front of the dwarves to see what their reaction will be to break them in slowly at first. Since they know Rina isn’t crazy but just weird and that she’s sane, the argument would supposedly lure them into a false sense of security it seems? Rina is also clearly not crazy but just weird so they will think we’re deviants or it’s a kind of entertainment. She argued that it would let us know if we could fool the dwarves by having me pull Asakura around on a leash.

I hate when Rina is right; partly my ego wants to always be smarter than her, but I also don’t like doing this to her. Sometimes it works, but she does have a good mind.

Of course I wanted to make her wear overalls first; some things will be too visible if she wears a skirt. But she argued it has to look like we’re deviants just trying to pass the time in a bad situation.

She tossed the overalls and said something about them not being sexy enough when she doesn’t have boobs as big as Asakura.

I’ll have to retrieve the overalls later.

Why is she so picky anyway?

We haven’t even hit a town yet.

I’m starting to feel really embarrassed when she comes back in the shortest skirt she can find and wears a blouse similar to Asakura’s. Then I feel even worse when she ties it up at the bottom of the shirt cinched up together showing off her midriff, and undoes most the front buttons in a daisy duke style blouse effect.

Crap. This is seriously a bad situation. It doesn’t help that she purposefully tries to make me see up her skirt while I’m walking her around. She doesn’t let the dwarves see, but they are already getting weird ideas.

At first they had a serious look and looked pretty mad at us. As we approached the dwarves I was scared so badly I didn’t know what to do. I could feel my heartbeat accelerate too. They are watching us…we’re getting closer, but Rina just seems to be hanging a lot cooler than I am, acting fully the part. Her steel will gives me courage where inwardly I’m scared like a sheep in front of wolves. Of course she gets off on stuff like this, so to her it’s probably not even stressful.

As we get right next to them, I’m about ready to lose my cool, when Rina stops at tugs the leash from me to signal to get cool and play cool. It barely works in time.

Then the dwarves suddenly are laughing at us. One of them tries to toss a beer bottle at us playfully but his fellows stop him. What the hell? Is that what happens in dwarven bars?

The dwarves think it’s funny. They end up laughing a lot while Rina pretends to be my pet. They at first gave us weird stares until we could make them crack a smile. Rina pretended to pee on Hrogin and that got all of them laughing pretty hard. I think I lost two years of my life when she did that for fear she would end up showing off her private parts, but she somehow is very careful about that. In the end, the only one that saw more than they should is me.

Jeez, I am going to really spank her for sure later. That was so stressful.

Hrogin …didn’t take that very well. At least he didn’t kill us and he is looking pretty angry. He is probably wondering if we are insulting his leadership or his really long beard I suspect. He did chase us off for a bit. It seems the dwarves are entirely convinced we’re misfit teenagers that should be in a juvenile detention center. I’m starting to think that’s not a bad idea too.

The problem is it might work too well. They problem is also that they are surely going to think all humans are crazy now. But if we don’t do it they’ll want to burn her at the stake for being a creature of darkness.

I’m not sure yet what they think of Asakura, since we haven’t yet gotten to the part where we do the subterfuge with her on the leash instead. The plan is that once they see Rina do it a few times I then switch Asakura into it and then they hopefully won’t suspect it when she’s acting strange the rest of the day. We break them into thinking and accepting the idea that we are pranksters, while at the same time getting Asakura used to being around them and Rina in parts and in turns over time. We start slowly with them just accepting the idea that we’re playing around with each on the leash for about a half hour. Rina gets close to the dwarves and even tries to snatch food from them like a dog would. Rina also does some kind of weird strutting like a dog on a runway model’s turf.

Some of them reward her with some beef jerky of some kind to chew on for putting up a good show. And I was surprised when some of them pass a hat with money it.

Wow, we just made some serious money I realize after collecting the hat.

Oh shit! They think Rina is a stripper now?

I hate doing this to Asakura but I have to draw their attention away from her acting inhuman. That’s the only reason I will put up with this. I hate the idea that someone will look pervy at MY Asakura.

“It’s OK, Shun. We’re only doing this to save her,” Rina said patting my back. Somehow inside she’d guessed I felt pretty awful about this.

Finally, we alternated me putting the collar on Asakura with the leash. I was a bit shocked when I realized that Asakura seeing Rina on the leash with me walking her makes her jealous somehow. She wants to prove she’s the main dog it seems. Even animals have mentality of trying to have rivalry for the alpha position, which I just learned. Because this part is harder and less control I don’t get as close to them as with her; she gets really jumpy and nervous when we get close to the dwarves. Meanwhile Rina acts normal now, and is throwing fits of jealousy to make the dwarves think we’re doing some kind of human game.

But little by little we get it to work.

They start accepting our little game. But from the beginning I wasn’t able to get Asakura close to them and I had to start from far off with the dwarves thinking I was just trying to get more money for my stripper girls. Then I alternated them several times, each time collecting more money. The dwarves seem to think that we aren’t getting close because they haven’t chipped in enough money in the hat.

Weird…

After taking a turn again with Rina…

I had to slap Rina on the ass a few times when she got into it too much though. She at one point came dangerously close to showing off some small boobs but I caught it in time. The dwarves were kind of mad when I shut that down.

Over the next few hours, we’re able to get Asakura to within ten feet of them, where before she’d been about feet feet away. That was a huge accomplishment because Asakura has to tone down from being so aggressive. It didn’t start off as a hit though. She was afraid of them at first, and kept trying to shy away, with it looking like this was probably just her first time as a stripper. Sometimes she shook her head, and would buck against the leash digging her heels into the ground. Then I’d have to alternate calming her down. I always had to slap her ass when she would try to growl.

That’s too much of a signal that could reveal the truth.

Judging by the reactions, the dwarves probably thought that she didn’t want to be seen as a sexual deviant. They kept just laughing at us while their smiths are still working on our escape tools.

Asakura does look pretty young too, almost as young as Rina because she exercised a lot before we got to this world and because she’d graduated from college really fast. Also because it’s cross culture I’m not sure if the dwarves would worry about their ages or mine, since it’s harder to judge ages when looking across another culture’s profile and boundaries…so it probably helped with the camouflage. Sometimes she almost seemed normal. She was starting to act more like there was something alive inside, but it’s just the aggressive nature inside her was somehow extremely dominant.

I did catch that to an outsider it probably looks like Asakura has either a mean streak or an ice queen look because of how hard it is to tone down the aggressive part of whatever the demon DNA did to her. The look on her face and it’s coldness to anyone but me can’t be hidden of course. In fact, at the start I’d had a makeshift muzzle on her, which I’d disguised with a bandanna over her face to conceal it. I couldn’t risk her acting out in aggression. That would be a red flag to the dwarves.

The dwarves give us a break and don’t ask us to do much. It seems they knew I’ve had to use a lot of magic the night before and mages need time to rest, which is true. They also know I’d made a big breakthrough before that with being able to improve the water ladder anchoring system.

But I also have to get my energy sword back. It’d melted right into the cavern wall. With everything that happened last night I’d yet to retrieve it and the dwarves didn’t dare touch it. In hindsight it was stupid to leave it out. If an enemy had come by they might have gotten curious about it.

I won’t make that mistake again.

First I was wondering how to get it out.

Hmm, the only way would be to heat up the sword again, but that would start to burn off a lot of mana I might need soon.

While working up getting Asakura used to people I was also able to try to work it loose. But it was really difficult. It takes several hours of yanking it back and forth while hot to get it loose. Because the blade had been unnatural hot from the paladin holy light hitting the tentacle demon it had created a situation of unnaturally hardened glue like cage around it.

I had to pour out lot of magic to work it back and forth slowly while trying to not get burned from molten rock pouring from the crevice. Sometimes the molten rock forced us to retreat from the blade when it ran down it near the hilt. That would then great an additional delay.

Then we’d stop and let it cool. While it was hardening I was able to get Asakura more used to the dwarves. It’s really touch and go for a bit. Little by little, I think they are actually hoping my women are actually strippers to give them shows.

They keep interrupting me when I’m trying to retrieve my energy sword. It’s annoying.

After the fourth try I finally got it shook loose.

We were lucky nothing attacked during that time.

But we still see evidence that the goblins have been here recently. That makes me on edge. There are a few tracks around camp that I hadn’t seen before, but I’m not sure if they are from before the most recent battle or not.

The dwarves had found they’d cut up the rope water ladder and in places even taken sections of the rope. That meant we had to think about what to do with the missing sections since we didn’t have spare rope to use. When we try communicating anything with the dwarves, it turns out much like a Pictionary game.

We can’t tell if the dwarves mean the goblins were here recently or if they meant before the attack. But coupled with what I saw with the tracks I’m convinced there are still goblins around close by. The longer we’re down here, the bigger the chance that the goblins will have reinforcements on the other side.

Why do our problems just get bigger when we try to cut them out?

The dwarves would draw it out on paper and then we’d compare the drawing with the real thing and in this way they’d built a primitive system of communicating with us. They see the need for me to understand what’s going on so I can adequately help Hrogin with their combat potential.

The dwarf who does the Pictionary system with us I’ve nicknamed Lucky, since we have no other way to tell who or what he normally does. He’s a younger fellow with the shortest beard among them and a shaved scalp around the rest of him. He has a lot of tattoos on his head and forearms. But he seems to be like a cartographer or mapmaker and he carries lots of books and scrolls. Perhaps this is why he was given the job to coordinate with us since he draws better than the others.

His hands don’t look like a miner’s or a smith’s. He doesn’t spend too much time with us, but whenever we see him he nods at us to see if we need anything. Sometimes he brings us purified boiled water, which we’re grateful for.

I’ve decided dwarves are really cool. Despite having problems they are giving us respect and fair treatment as much as any one of their own. Of course, as soon as we can possibly manage it without being discovered I will block any of them from seeing either Asakura or Rina from this moment forward with all of my power. No one will even be allowed to talk to the girls.

Later after building things forward some more for our escape, I tried to get Asakura used to the water when most of the dwarves were resting later on and only a few guards were around. I also made them look the other way while we undressed. It’s not an option and I think I was overly fierce because I hadn’t been able to get Asakura used to underwear yet. I have to get Asakura used to the water in this fragile mental state.

The whole time we’re working and for the hour before I led her here to the water’s edge, my fear of her being discovered is equally balanced by my fear of her drowning because of her mental state affecting being able to hold her breath under water. If the dwarves get us ready to cross it before she gets used to water, my heart will die in agony and anguish. My heart is pounding as we get close to it.

I still had reservations about getting Asakura into the water. She didn’t like it because it’s cold, but was excited when I stripped off her clothes. She thought I wanted to ‘play’ some more until we get waist deep in the cold water. Then I have to hold onto her around the waist with all my strength to keep her from running out of the pool.

That scared me too. What if she didn’t run to her clothes and just started streaking through the cavern. I also had to make sure the dwarves didn’t turn around while this is happening.

Finally I got her neck deep in the water. I showed her like I would a small child how to hold water in my mouth closing off my mouth with my fingers pinching my nose. Then I show her how. It takes a few tries but she gets it while I’m trying to not stare openly at her boobs.

Then after that I had to show her how I held it while slowly inching under the water. She follows suite after the fifth time, while we held each other because the water is so cold.

As I activated a light spell for underwater sight so we weren’t blind, I wasn’t sure if she knew how to hold her breath still. So when I was playing take the human for a walk around the dwarves a few times I got her into knee deep in the pool. The first few tries ducking her head under we have a bad reaction from her and I have to stop her from fleeing the pool again. The third try she stays under the water and holds her breath just like mine, while I’m showing her I’m holding the air in with my cheeks puffed out.

Finally she gets used to it, though she’s now dog paddling instead of normal swimming. I had to work on her swimming technique too. But she follows me around and uses the same motions I use to swim.

Of course I’m glad she’s under water because right then I caught one of the dwarves trying to see her naked. I issue a warning shout and his fellow guard slaps him in the back of the skull hard while his cheeks burn in shame at getting caught.

I guess I can’t blame him. There aren’t very many women this beautiful in the whole world…and I get to see it whenever I want. Woohoo!!

I wish we had more time to teach her to swim again. I didn’t make as much progress as I wanted. But the technique was still in her brain, I discover. It’s a good sign because I’d been worried about if the chemicals from the pheromones and demon sex had messed up her brain. She still has the memory of having learned the techniques for swimming I just have to jog her memory a bit. The proof of that is that I only have to show her how to do an underwater breast stroke once, and the normal side strike and overhand long swimming strokes once each as well.

She then has them down pat and when I asked her if she had them, she gives me a ‘thumbs up’.

That’s a good sign too. Even though she’s not talking she has recognized positive and confirmation signals that are in ordinary society. She also still looks smart, but just seems to look around at people much like a fourth or fifth grade kid might look at things. She’s not staring off in space and not looking vacant like a retard.

This is good. I can work with this! Yes!

I’m sure things are going to be OK.

After the swimming lesson she gives me a big hug. It’s not just a hug for a sex partner, but something like I can feel her gratitude for helping her. Her personality is still there, just like it’s been de-leveled it seems.

We didn’t stay long since the water freaked her out. Thankfully the dwarves probably thought that was just because of how cold it was. But I wondered also if some small part of her sniffing the water was smelling the small minute traces of goblin blood in the water? It’s very obvious her sight and hearing are tons better than before. Anything in the cavern she hears extremely well.

As we get out of the water and are getting dressed I can’t help but notice Asakura has totally accepted me as her master. She’s not hiding away or worried about me seeing her naked. In fact, it’s like she wants and demands it. She points at her clothes and wants me to dress her it seems, while almost shoving her humongous boobs in my face.

Beautiful boobs are wonderful. You can never get too much of seeing them.

I enjoyed putting her clothes on. I can’t help it. It’s fun when she looks this hot.

While we’d been working the dwarves have been busy elsewhere.

Rina also took it reasonably well and was supportive of why we were at the pool. She’d had the same worry about Asakura being able to swim and helps cover for me. Being responsible is good for her, I can see.

The dwarves have cut up leather salvaged from dead goblins and tie the ends together to replace the lost rope ladder sections. It takes a lot of time, because sometimes they have to weave two or three pieces together since dwarven leather is built sturdier than goblin leather is. Goblin leather it seems is built upon the idea of really thin scraped structure because of an impoverished population with limited leather supply that they have to mix among a lot of people to fight over it.

I’m somehow also convinced that goblin leather isn’t always just from animals. It doesn’t look like any leather that I’m used to in recognizable animals you’d find in the wilds. It’s totally gross when you think that some of the salvaged goblin leather came from goblin loincloth pieces too or their hip belts.

We can only stand touching them after it’s soaked and washed in the water several times. If this wasn’t vital to our surviving and not a live or die situation I would never touch the things. Some of the goblin loincloths have maggots on them. I don’t want to know why. I can’t know why, it’s too much.

Gross…

We then painstakingly work out the details.

The dwarves are the most unlucky. Some of them seem tempted to put their hands in the fire, after touching the filthy goblin leather. But the dwarves don’t dare risk any extra rope since they’d already budgeted their rope on a thin risk margin before this even happened.

I hope it pays off.

I also hope Asakura’s mind heals or comes back. It’s got my sweating bullets inside. Even though I’ve seen good positive signals that it will, it’s like my fear and doubt want to creep up on me. Will she revert or gain parts of herself back? Or will it come back in like parts, if at all?

Slowly she gets used to other people more, but it’s painfully slow and nowhere near where it needs to be. But she seems to only like my smell. Rina also is careful not to get too close to her. If I allow for too much time next to her with us being idle then I also have to deal with her trying to start to snuggle or make out. I can’t allow that since I don’t know if I can stop her, even with other people around.

The problem is once we get across the water tunnel, we’re going to have to march in very close quarters with the dwarves. She can’t handle that right now either. If the tunnel is too small, her aggression will come out. It probably won’t act out on me, but it could be disastrous if she’s next to Rina or the dwarves. The dwarves would also have no mercy or forgiveness to someone that isn’t even the same species, is my current fear.

I have to break it down before we leave the water tunnel.

It’s a long day.

I practice magic during part of the day going through my exercises, and practice with the runic shielding and the resistance buff particularly.

I worked on trying to see if I can duplicate the telekinesis trick I’d done with the sword earlier. Unfortunately that was a situation created by desperation. Because of it, somehow I can’t get it to work right. Maybe it was partly the adrenaline in my system that affected the success rate? I’m not sure why but I’m having trouble with it. It’s going to need a lot of practice sessions.

I managed to duplicate it twice successfully out of like eight tries. It seems my telekinesis skill is not ready yet. But at least having a glimmer of hope has let me see it’s something that can someday become something usable and beautiful. Seeing how it helped I’m thinking it can have other uses and so I feel very frustrated when it doesn’t work. I also can’t really practice using the energy sword much because it uses way too much mana.

I kept working at the telekinesis thing some more after that after taking a break, but had to put getting Asakura practiced at being on the leash more than anything else and that caused me to lose a lot of time. As a result I didn’t get very much telekinesis practice. It worries me. There isn’t enough time in the day. I also have to promote balance with other things.

Strangely enough, Asakura is thinking the leash is like a security blanket. From now on, somehow she’s mistakenly thought that I should always have her on the spiked collar and leash.

That’s…messed up. I didn’t want her to think that. I just didn’t want the dwarves to know. I feel bad about it because she trusts me so much and hasn’t held back on me, with a very loving personality.

My doubts are growing on me too. I wonder if we’ll ever get out of here. I have to concentrate myself on thinking of things that are useful and productive. What the hell am I going to do? Will I be stuck underground forever? Will I develop fear of being in closed in spaces? They won’t buy our little comedy act forever either. How soon until I can get Asakura acting somewhat passable as a human?

I’ve also learned that deception makes me feel stressful more than killing orcs for some reason. I don’t like trying to lie to people on my same team.

It’s been a long day. I’ve worked so hard trying to work with Asakura and get her passable enough for normal and getting used to things that I’ve sweat a lot. Rina with me has also been sweating too. By the time we go to bed we’re thoroughly exhausted. The other dwarves are also exhausted.

But even so they keep a heavy guard.

It seems they don’t want us to help with guard duty in the night. They are sacrificing themselves for that, so that I can charge up my power. I feel grateful for them. It must be hard for them to do that, they are as tired as we are. They aren’t just going on less sleep, but having to stay up longer when they already hurt really bad, and are hungry and thirsty.

I feel moved.

I hope that Fox can bail me out on this one. It’s another bad deal, as we get ready for bed cleaning our tent. Rina tried to talk to me at dinner, but I was feeling a bit moody and stayed silent. I was brought out of it at the end, when Asakura insisted I take her on a walk after putting the collar on herself and handing me the leash.

Still Fox’s probably got like a chalk of tick marks now like a war plane for all the times she’s helped me.

Will she also have a solution for dealing with Asakura?