Chapter 102
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Chapter 102

 

 

Living in a dwarven noble’s house…ahhh this is the life!

We awoke to the smell of bacon and eggs. Oh this is nice.

Even though I can’t eat them I still like the smell and miss them terribly…that thought makes me want to bang my head on the dresser. Bacon, eggs, and hashbrowns…yum.

But when I wake up I’m also relieved too that I haven’t accidentally teleported Sunghee with me. Nor is she connected to me anymore in the sex morph form or whatever it was. I am looking like a normal person pretty much…except my dong is still much fatter and thicker than a human’s should be; not to mention a little bit longer.

Actually the sex demon morph thing scared the hell out of me. Even though it felt good, I was worried about what I’d turn into and if it would permanently stick Sunghee to me like a Siamese twin or something.

I decided I wasn’t ready for it and that I’d shelf that ability for awhile. Who knows what problems it would have, plus anything that wasn’t a demon would for sure try to kill me for if they saw it.

I feel really drained and tired from yesterday and whatever energy the sex demon morph did though. It must be an energy inefficient system because I’m feeling like my muscles ache all over too, and like something similar to heat exhaustion.

“Damn, I love bacon and eggs. The only thing better than this would be adding in hash browns,” Rina said awaking with a start. She’s come into my room to wake us, which annoys me greatly. She’s like all over talking excitedly but some of it I missed because I’d been waking up.

This house even by modern standards of Earth looks and feels good to be in. And it’s well made.

It takes getting used to this house. The dwarven beds are smaller too, but it’s still worked out because they are built to be comfortable and warm. We did have to curl up our legs together though during sleeping to prevent our feet from feeling cold and sticking out the bottom of the bed though.

I discover Rina is holding up a kerosene lamp of some kind as she came in so we can finally see what’s going on. Last nate, very late we’d been escorted here and in such a hurry and so tired that we’d literally fallen into bed immediately before having a chance to scout the place out.

Svinn reassured us that the place was well protected and safe.

But is that an empty promise?

The goblins do have spellcasters. I’ve had us sleeping with my stealth magic ability active.

Rina was in the room next to ours. But it had taken a lot of discussion to make her sleep in a separate room as us.

But as usual she’s come in to bother us.

This room is fairly small by modern standards, but for a medieval noble’s house it’s actually pretty awesome.

Like usual everything is made of stone and the walls are awesomely sturdy, made of square interlocking blocks that are much larger than brick and cut with extreme precision. There’s also no space between each block, they are so well fit together. There’s no ruin or decay in any way and the room has an awesome homely feel to it. The one window in the room is only there because we’re on the second floor, and has the iron shutters shut tightly.

I discover our bed is a rich dark mahogany wood with a humongous headboard that holds tons of books. We’d come in so late and were so battle weary that I hadn’t had a chance to study the small dwarven keep much yet. Unfortunately however, the books are all in the runic script the dwarves use. I wish I had time to learn their language but we don’t, and the language for being able to develop magic skills would be a higher priority.

There’s also a single dresser against the wall nearest the door, which is also a very heavy sturdy thing, with even its own barricade system in case the house is breached.

I’m also shocked when I see there’s also a panic room with an extra secure inner lock, disguised as a walk in closet in the other corner. Between the corner and here the floor is polished so clean it has a reflective sheen, probably also due to sometime of chemical resin used to protect it and add to its effect.

These dwarves think of everything! But it has also amazing style and not just robust.

It’s a rich person’s house in every sense of the word. It makes me jealous and want to stay here longer…possibly long term, but I keep reminding myself that there are no dungeon or career facilities for me and the others here.

“Is that what I think it is?” I heard myself saying, while trying to wake up still.

“Nice house,” Asakura said waking up next to me. She looks a bit sleepy still, next to me. She sits up straight in bed with her boobs spilling out over on top of the covers.

We always slept together now. She also never wore clothes to sleep and somehow always ends up plastered up against me. I do like that part, since she now resembles a goddess in human form and never get tired of feeling her. Plus it’s very cold underground at night, even with blankets.

How does she not get bothered by her own nudity?

Actually, that’s making me thirsty, I think as I see her nipples with beads of milk glistening there. She looks fuller than usual. Getting a good drink should help me get rid of the exhaustion.

“Shun, can we get a house like this? It’s awesome!” Rina said, bouncing up and down excitedly.

“Careful you are holding an oil lamp,” I reminded her.

“Sorry,” she said back as she steadied it. Her eyes were alarmed to when I’d made her remember the potential danger of fire.

“You don’t feel bad that there’s no electricity?” I said, wondering why she accepted it so well.

Next to me Asakura is still rubbing her eyes. “Can’t we just sleep…like one more hour please?” she pleaded.

“We do have a lot to do,” I said.

“It’s OK, I still have you even if I don’t have electricity and I’m not your number one,” Rina answered back with her face scrunched up with a compromised look.

“Rina…I didn’t know you could cook?” Asakura said. “Is it safe to let her in a kitchen?” she asked me.

I chuckled. “I’m not sure actually.”

“So who is cooking?” I ask in alarm, right after that.

Rina looks puzzled, which makes Asakura and I glance at each other. At the thought of it, we realize we can’t be seen like this. I have Asakura put a shirt on and cover up.

The next few minutes are a blur as we go through the house studying the architecture. We also find out the house came with a servant. But nobody had told us that yet. It’s a cook, gardener, and maid all in one.

Its the dwarven servant girl that has been doing the cooking for us!

The dwarf girl looks a bit too young though. How did she get this job? It looks like she’s a teenager…at least she’s not fat or thick, but it bothers me that there’s a teenager living with us. What kind of effect will her and Rina have on each other?

Also it means I will have to have Asakura be careful about going around topless. Which is very disappointing. I never get tired of seeing her monster sized cans. I only glanced at her, but then pulled Asakura away while we plan our setup with Rina.

We can’t let the dwarf girl become suspicious.

So we tell Rina, that she will be the voice to speak on my behalf with the servant to sort of keep her away from us as much as possible. Rina accepts the responsibility gladly and is anxious to prove herself. She’s ordered to respect our privacy, and to have Rina be the go between, between us and her and hopefully give Rina less reason to be stuck to me and be busy. We stress that we need privacy often because of my work as a mage. That is also true as well, so it’s good cover. I needed to give Rina stuff to do anyway to keep her from interfering with us and because she has too much energy, and a propensity for getting into trouble.

Through Rina, we find that she’s aware of how mages have to protect their secrets, which is good. We’re surprised she also has the language enchant, so that might have been why she’d been appointed the servant working for whoever owned the dwarven mansion.

That could be very useful. Svinn having the enchant was good, but he’s a town leader for cripe’s sake. He won’t be at our beck and call and will often be doing stuff. There’s also potential confusion issues because we’re still not sure how long the dwarven military will expect us to be here.

At first we hear complaints but the message from Rina was that she told her it’s OK to do her job, but that Rina was my taste tester to block my enemies from poisoning me and that we’d had problems before, even though that’s not entirely true. Rina does like the idea of being the taste tester though. That silenced the dwarven pride as she’d heard that dwarf lords and others used the same concept. It seems it’s the dwarven pride that made the servant girl want to work directly with us. It’s also prestige to serve a mage, even in dwarven culture so we had to curb her wanting to come up with counter arguments to get around Rina.

I think that’s a good thing though. She wanted to do her job and I can’t fault her for that.

What was her name again? I forgot it already because Rina was talking so fast and so excitedly when we were working it out.

“It was D something, I think,” Asakura said while sitting on the edge of the bed as we were getting dressed.

“Oh, are you sure?” I asked.

“I think so? Let’s check again,” she said.

“Soon... I could use the rest,” I said.

After that we looked around the small manor house some more before we officially get changed again. We’d only thrown on last night’s clothes to make a quick look of things, but now we really wanted to get changed and I wanted to have a second feeding on Asakura after this.

The house has small rooms branching off the main living room, with only the living room and the kitchen being large rooms. There are two cellars we learn about, which is common in dwarven buildings. Apparently enough of them love alcohol so much that there are always two even in poor households and that one of them is always entirely devoted to alcohol, says Rina quoting Deinan, our dwarf servant girl.

There are also two panic rooms it seems, which usually only happens in the lord’s keeps or village chieftain houses. Most houses will have a panic room that is linked to the cellar, we find out. We also find out that its also common in dwarven architecture to link the cellar, or food supply to the panic room because of the dwarven experience with often having their cities under siege. This lets them have access to hidden food storage in the cellar, but also has advantages for escaping fire, and other problems.

Thus, after the kitchen, we get to have a better look at the place with it not so dark. We find we have four bedrooms which are really small, one being occupied by Rina, one acting as Deinan’s room on the other side of the house, and one near Deinan’s room which is often used as a study.

Our next order of business it to tell the servant girl through Rina that we only eat light small meals and now we have to figure out how to ditch the food, since I can’t eat human food at all anymore…which also suggests I am evolving into another species of some kind of demon. I don’t want to overfeed Asakura my food either, because I don’t know if that will make her get fat or have other consequences like teach her to over eat.

I do find out after Rina brings us the food that Asakura can and does still eat human food, which is actually very reassuring. I’d observed that earlier, but a medical person would look at it objectively more than once in measuring out potential situations and so I am too. I still have my secret desire to find some kind of demonologist to consult with once we reach a city; because it’s also clear that Asakura also needs and uses my seminal fluid for nourishment.

“Shun…my boobs hurt. I need you to suck the milk out, there’s just too much and it makes it hard to move. There’s too much,” Asakura said after pulling her shirt off again and leaning over me. Normally Asakura didn’t complain about the swelling unless it was really bad, which was in this case.

“Sure I’ll be happy to help out,” I said cheerfully, to which she giggled in response.

This is the life…

She began trying to cover up her moaning while I have breakfast.

But after that things start to go south on us fast with a few surprises. We were way over due for a good rest when the house alarm went off. I didn’t know dwarven houses had such things. We didn’t know what it was until the servant girl busted in our room screaming to get ready to fight.

But unfortunately that creates another problem…the servant girl wanting to be a loyal and proud dwarf to guard and warn us busted in our bedroom just as I’m doing my second breakfast and daily feeding of breast milk from Asakura, who is topless with me lying on her lap pillow while I get a good drink. This takes a long time since I need a lot of it to help promote mana regeneration. I’d drained one breast after over an hour of feeding and was mostly through the other when the servant girl busted in.

She sees everything from the waist up on Asakura and me. The dwarf girl is very flustered and frozen in place. “Ahh…sorry!” she bows low, and her cheeks are red.

Nor does Asakura bother to cover up, since she likes when I’m sucking on her. She seems to have a fetish for it, I think. But we’re both annoyed by having others see it too.

“Shit!” I swore in frustration, looking for something to throw at her.

Did she notice? Or does she think we’re just doing things a normal human would do?

I’m not sure…but then she begins talking.

“Sorry!” the dwarf girl again apologized but then began going off on shouting to get ready for battle.

“What’s going on? Why did you come in here and what’s that racket?” I demanded.

“The house alarm! All dwarven houses have them!” she screamed. “It’s going off! They only go off when hostiles come near the walls!”

“Eh? They have something like that?” Asakura asked in surprise. She looks at me.

“Guess we need to go out and take a look,” Rina said from further down the hall.

“I guess so? But it sounds useful,” I shrugged.

“We need to move! Now!” Deinan says out loud.

“I’ll have to ask Svinn about it later,” I said aloud.

Within the next minute of a flurry of activity grabbing our equipment, we are ready for battle taking the dwarf girl with us.

At first, I thought our servant girl was too young or small to fight. But she refuses to stay behind. We are reassured otherwise. She’s not much of a catch though. There are some dwarven girls that are good looking, and similar to humans on level of beauty even but this isn’t one of them. I have no intention of adding her to my group permanently and she is actually a bit ugly. She’s not fat or big boned or thick but just her face is pitted with scars and like she’s been burned with scar tissue on all one side of her head and shoulder, not to mention the right arm, and looks like she’s gone through hell in some past injury that didn’t heal up well from a few years ago. Her right ear is no longer pointed like the left one but has a funny angle to it.

Still, an extra personal soldier temporarily is a good thing right? Especially if she wants to prove herself and her loyalty. But I don’t have a lot of resources to buy hew new equipment yet and have no idea if she’ll stay here at the mansion or go with us. Nor do we have an idea yet how much dwarven gear costs.

As we leave the house I find it has an armory near the front door, which Deinan stops us at so we can grab whatever we need. It’s a beautiful armory actually. It makes me jealous and want to stay. That itself is also a dwarven architecture item common in lords houses or those that are in high economic or social standing. This is a useful design and makes the house that much more appealing.

The dwarf girl also pulls out her own sword and shield hanging from a type of shoulder strap. Then she puts on a sort of mask that is designed to protect the head with almost the same efficiency as a helmet but looks much better than a bulky helmet would.

She insists on being on the front line, without realizing that Asakura is probably much stronger than she is. It surprised me.

“Is that fair to put her on the front line?” Rina asked me.

I shrugged, “if everyone lives it’s OK right?” But I did remind her after that, who was in charge, which she is fine with and even chuckled about.

We left the house as quickly as possible while the servant girl locks the door behind us with a big silver key.

“We can’t have anyone sneaking in while we’re gone,” she explained while the alarm is still going off. Now that we’re outside the noise is much worse.

That was something else new to me about dwarf culture. Their keys and keyholes are huge. They are bigger than many kitchen knives because they make the doors so heavy and want it to last a long time and to be so durable. It also has a sort of protective sheath that unlocks and opens for smaller tumblers and a mini-key inside it.

I wish we had more time to study it out.

“Shun, we have incoming!” Rina warns me just as I get a shield up.

“What? But we’re inside the keep?” I protested.

“Yeah that can’t be right,” Asakura mimicked my protesting attitude.

But Rina’s right!

Because we’d not expected to get attacked this early I hadn’t put up our morning shields yet and now its causing me to swear prolifically. I got my shield up, and then Asakura’s, but the servant girl and Rina have to duck for cover as goblin arrows are being shot at us.

“What the hell is going on?!” Asakura looks around wildly but we still don’t have an idea which part of the dark cavern the arrows are coming from.

“What the fudge?! How did they get over the wall?!” I yelled.

“I don’t know! It shouldn’t be possible! The wall is still intact. So is the gate, look!” Deinan said.

Sure enough she’s right.

I have a bad feeling about this…I think just as I got the runic shielding up on Rina and then Deinan after.

At that point I remember what Fox warned about me the night before.

The three goblin shamans!

“The three goblin shamans…this must be their doing. A goblin shaman could figure out a way to get past a solid wall like that couldn’t he?” I asked Deinan, hoping she’d know.

Her eyes bug out. “Goblin shamans? Here? Are you sure?” She looks about but we’re not sure yet where the shooting is coming from.

We’re having to duck for cover first. We hit a ditch embankment and hunker down to look down over the town. The house we’re coming from has the highest elevation, and gives us a bit of a view.

The houses below us are trying to get organized.

But sure enough below us, one of the houses is completely in flames that are flaring up high into the air.

“What the hell? That isn’t possible! That’s made of solid stone!” Deinan exclaimed.

“A stone house is on fire?” Rina is also shocked and looks at me.

It could only be one thing…

Sorcery...

It isn’t hard to adapt the mana sensory skill I use for healing to feel mana in the air around us. I can feel the mana coming from the fire engulfing the house and the destruction all around it.

“It’s clear that the fire used to burn that house is magic in origin. That explains how they can cause it to burn, even though the house is made of stone,” I said sadly.

“Were… people in… that house?” Asakura asked with big eyes, looking first at me, and then at the dwarf. She is watching for a reaction. Because it’s the reason the alarm went off and not after I fear for the worst t.

The dwarf looked more angry than sad, but there was a bit of sadness too. “Those fuckers will pay for this,” Is this a dwarven reaction? Her eyes are so hot with desire for revenge and killing that even I’m afraid of her. Then she cleared her throat finally enough to resume speaking. “Yeah a family of four lived there. They had two sons about my age,” she said biting her lip.

“Damn. I’m sorry,” I said. I put my hand on her shoulder for empathy, but she shrugged it off and pushed me away.

“I don’t think anyone could be alive in that inferno. Even a mage with fire resistance would have a tough time in a fire that hot,” Deinan said frowning.

The flames are roaring very badly even from this distance. I can’t help but notice how hot the blaze looks. Below us in the plaza area bewildered dwarves are slaying as many goblins as they can and fighting back while looking as confused as we are.

They are wondering the same thing that we had, until we’d worked it out; how did they get in?

The damage is done. That family of four is already gone. There’s no way to put out a fire that hot either with just a bucket brigade. We’ll have to wait it out.

“It’s not your fault, human,” Deinan spat angrily.

“Shun, is it normal for a bunch of goblin filth to be able to have magic that powerful that can toast a whole house like that? Especially…when it’s not made out of wood?” Rina asked me.

“I…I don’t think so,” I guessed.

“Goblin shamans are not to be laughed at…unless they are dead of course,” Deinan smirked. “Our people have found the goblin shamans do quite well when they pool their power together. Others often underestimate them, but as she can see they can pull of some pretty sneaky moves sometimes.”

“How and why did the shamans pick that house rather than mine?” I wondered aloud.

Was it because of the stealth magic? Fox had told me to always keep it up. I have a bad feeling about it…

Even now as we were hiding down in the ditch there were a few goblins still trying to shoot at anything they could see. We stayed low.

“Shun, I smell…predators?” Asakura said, not sure what exactly she smelled in the air. I’m sure she smelled the goblins, but maybe she was picking up on the shamans? I couldn’t be sure until we found whatever it was. She seemed unsure about it too. Did that mean there were other things too?

“Deinan, by any chance was someone in that house a magic user?” I guessed aloud, with a sick feeling in my gut.

Deinan gives me a long hard look, “what? How did you know?” She scowls at me so hard it looks like her face might crack. “You better explain yourself, human.”

“You will address Shun with respect dwarf. Acting out thinking we owe you and addressing him as if he’s below you and as ‘human’ will surely be punished,” Asakura said, her eyes burning with hostility.

Deinan glared back at her.

“Hey guys, let’s all get along,” Rina said.

“Sorry,” Deinan said, but was still glaring at us.

“Are dwarves racist?” Asakura asked me.

“I don’t know. Let’s focus on what’s at hand,” I said.

My fears are confirmed after we confirm it a few minutes later following a few mana trails going around the house. Fortunately there aren’t mana trails going anywhere near the small mini keep we stayed at but I still don’t feel safe anymore. I’m being hunted at night now too. That means it may get tricky to replenish my power from now on. Most people even if they are wicked strong, still have to sleep at night, whether or not they are warriors, soldiers, or mages. And if someone is asleep when they are attacked even if they respond in time it may take a minute to get their bearings. People don’t do well without a safe place to sleep.

This also threatens my ability to reach Fox with the dream skill. And that’s my biggest concern. Fox is like our life line and Sunghee is proving herself to be one too.

It seems that the goblin shamans had been using a magic sensory skill during the night to try to locate me, I conclude after studying the mana trails that are almost faded away. But because I had the stealth spells up on myself and also for Asakura (because of the demon DNA and not being sure how much of that would ping as a magic source;), it meant the goblins had found the next best thing and mistakenly thought one of the dwarves in that house was probably me.

It sucked realizing that someone had died in our place.

I was lost in sadness, until I felt Asakura’s arm around me. “It’s OK, Shun. Not your fault.” She then gave me a kiss on the top of my head.

“We’ll make them pay for this,” Deinan still growled. But I’m hesitant to be around her now because she’s suspicious of us now.

Dwarves can be kind of scary when they are really angry like that.

How did such a thing happen? Or rather, at what point did the goblins start tracking us? Was it before or after we got to this stronghold? Did they routinely try this trick at all strongholds, regardless of whether or not I’d been here or was it unique to now?

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