Chapter 107 Part B

 

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We’re getting ready to assist the dwarves again currently.

The shaman’s bag is pretty close to us as we approach it. But suddenly Asakura steps in front of me to face me.

This thing...might have some interesting loot!

“Do you want me to check it or should you?” Asakura asked.

“I think I should,” I said.

“But I’m …I mean I…have seniority? So shouldn’t I look out for you more?” Asakura asked.

She surprised me.

“What? Why do you think that?” I asked.

“Well I don’t want to be a moocher? And shouldn’t I be responsible for you?” she’s serious.

“Well that’s cool. But this is magic. It can be pretty scary sometimes,” I reminded her.

She looks down. “I guess that’s true. I should pull my weight for you more. You worked so hard and…I’m so grateful for all you do.”

Uh oh, she’s looking at me in a very erotic manner again…and she’s pushing her chest up and out…no I can’t. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t…must focus.

She’s about to kiss me. I put my hand out and touch her forehead gently, “Stop. We can’t start making out now. Let me do this. I’m not too sure, but its booby trapped I think,” I finished.

She looks pouty, “OK.”

Oh wait, how did she do that?

She somehow like…I don’t know…so fast. Her blouse is already off. I have to stop her before the skirt leaves to.

“Come on! You know this is like the only alone time we have! When we get back we’ll be surrounded by dwarves!” Asakura said.

She tried to kiss me again but I pulled back.

OK, new rule. No kissing. My kisses make her high. I’m pretty sure they’d make other people high too.

I’ll have to be careful of it! And maybe it means a skill that I can use when I need to.

But why is it like that?

I glanced back over to study the bag. As I turned to the bag the goblin shaman had I wonder about it. I’m intensely curious what’s in it. But my hand stops, feeling some hostile energy coming from it. I pull back quickly. Both of us are leering at carefully at first.

I don’t think it was my imagination. If there’s some kind of violent energy coming from the bag, it could mean either that is the energy type of the goblin summoner, or the alternative is it being a booby trap.

“What’s wrong?” Asakura has put on blouse again, but freezes seeing my reaction when she’d about to button up her shirt.

“You better back up,” I said urgently. I waved her back with my hands. She does so quickly, noticing I’m sensing danger.

“What’s going on?” she said, too worrying about being obsessed with me to finish buttoning up.

“Possibly a trap, I’m not sure yet,” I mused, with my hand on my chin.

“Help me find a really, really long wooden pole or rod of some kind,” I said.

“OK, sure. I got it Shun!” she hopped up and down.

I love that move.

Interesting…

The pheromones seem to make her want to obey me with first priority even before putting her school blouse back on. Weird…is it like the compulsion of the demon genes to make me want to control her? The demon genes are pushing for control centered moves obviously and I didn’t even realize it. That’s interesting in a way. I can’t really object to it, since it’s more fun that way. She’s helping me look through the wreckage for a house beam. Because it mirrors the real world’s building it takes us awhile to find a wooden beam when the house is made of stone.

Finally we found one in another section of the house. Despite being stone some of the upper floors use wooden beams to support lighter weight second story flooring or upper rafters. But the problem is we’re looking up at it from below trying to figure out a way up there when the whole thing looks like it’s in really bad shape of smoky black half burned ruins that are ash choked and won’t support our weight.

“We’ll have to figure out a different way up. It looks like the stairs to that spot were made of wood,” she confirmed after we’d finally seen an area with good wood.

“You’re right. This wood is kind of brittle from being so dry and nearly burned,” I said feeling the grain of some of the wood.

“I think I see another way up,” she said after pulling me by the hand to another spot. Since we aren’t fighting anymore I notice she likes to try to find excuses to hold my hand. She winks at me too.

“Will it hold us if we climb?” I asked her.

“Probably not,” she said, her hope being let down. “Sorry, I thought I’d found a good place to get up there.” We’re both looking nearly straight up between the remains of the tower section.

“So help me understand why we need this again?” Asakura asked me.

“That bag is so full of dark energy in a trap form of some kind, that it could go off if we touch it too much. It may be keyed to trying to use it or pull the items from the bag primarily, but any touching is probably pretty temperamental on an enchant like this. It’s likely some kind of warding to keep us from looking at , and stealing whatever magic toys that goblin summoner had acquired,” I said.

“And how does having the pole help us with that?” she asked.

She’s working and somehow able to effortlessly scale a nearly sheer stone wall. With superhuman agility and strength she is able to tug from the above flooring ruins. She takes a few minutes to pull it free.

“We need to use it to carry the bag carefully back to where the bulk of most of the goblin’s blood hit the ground with as much space between us and the bag as possible while it’s being moved since we don’t fully know the trigger system of this type of trap. Then while there we can sort of compare the feel of the latent energy coming from him with that in the leather bag. It will help us to know if it’s safe to touch it without it going off or if that’s just his energy signature overall,” I said.

“Oh that’s good. I like it! By having some distance it will help reduce the risk too when moving it on the edge of the pole,” she chirped.

“So you agree? You think it’s a good idea?” I asked. I thought it was, but maybe there was another route. I was open to the idea that she might come up with something better.

“I’m OK with it. You did good. I’m glad I can help too, Shun,” she smiled.

The floor collapsed after she finally uses her immense strength to rip a good sized beam out. Below I had to dodge and some of my runic shielding was damaged with falling rubble. I’m now up to my knees in collapsed floor wreckage and choking on dusty old ash and dirt stirred up in the air.

The runic shielding did help keep debris from getting on Asakura’s clothes…and lack of clothes. I can see small bits of debris on the topic circular conic section of her shielding.

Wow that’s really interesting. I hadn’t expected it to do that.

But would it work with rain water or water in general?

How does the shielding interpret damage from just particles? And was that also because I’d upgraded it recently?

“Sorry about that,” she said, cringing as the stuff made a ruckus. As easily as she climbs up, she now also comes back down after dusting off herself. Then she dusts off mine, looking for excuses to touch me.

“Isn’t this fun Shun? Who knows what we could find here too if we explored this area long enough!” she said.

“But don’t you think this area is already picked clean? Or is it even real since it’s a pocket reality?” I asked.

“Maybe so, but we get a chance to explore! Plus we can be alone. If we go back Rina will interfere,” she said. I noticed she had a head vein sticking out when she said that. The jealousy trigger is active.

We then work our way back to the bag. We’d been afraid to touch it ever since I realized what might be inside. I also realized something else. Whatever was in it probably didn’t go off, because I had blood on my hands from the goblin earlier. The slain goblin’s blood may have masked the trigger into thinking the goblin himself was touching the bag and I’d gotten lucky. Of course that’s if there’s a trap in there, which I’m not entirely sure of. This will definitely make an interesting conversation for Fox and Sunghee later.

“So how do you want to work this?” she asked with her hands on her hips and the board resting against the wall.

“Let me do it,” I said. “You just watch.”

Her hand is suddenly on mine, holding me there. “That’s enough. You have taken most of the risk so far. Let me help. I’m your lover aren’t I? I want to do things for you.”

This could be dangerous though.

Do I let her help?

My heart fluttered just a bit. “Yeah that’s true. But I can’t have you in danger.”

“You mean, I can’t have you in danger. It sounds cheesy but that’s how love is. Even if there’s some kind of demon chemicals involved. This love is real to me. Let me protect you,” she said. It doesn’t help that this whole time, her going topless makes her cans bounce all over the place because they are seemingly too big to be real. I’m not in a rush to change that since having her around me topless is hypnotic and therapeutic.

“Let me do it,” she said again more firmly. “Just tell me what to do.”

I carefully show her how to use the end of the beam to lift the leather bag like a lever while we move the bag very slowly.

“Stop,” I said.

“OK.”

“OK resume movement, but go very slowly and carefully like your holding a bomb,” I said.

Her face fell, “is that what this is? I somehow didn’t get that part before. I thought it was maybe less dangerous like moving a gun that was loaded.” She has a huge look of concern.

“Sorry,” I frowned.

“But it has a chance for a payout of something useful?” she guessed.

“Could be,” I answered.

“You didn’t answer my question you know,” she said.

While facing forward I’m aware of how seductive her tight hips and nice legs look with that posture of readiness.

“Exactly. If it’s what I think it is…then it could substantially help our abilities here on this world,” I replied.

“Oh Shun please keep some distance. Let me protect you. Stay back. I don’t want you doing the dangerous stuff,” she said.

“I know more about magic than you do. I should do it,” I said.

“Yeah you may know more than me but I still have a responsibility to care for you and I think only I can,” she countered.

I momentarily am caught off guard. She’s unexpectedly not interested in being complacent and letting the man do everything while she vegs on the couch as a parasite. I think it’s one of the reasons I like her.

“Do you regret wanting to help?” I’m curious what she’s thinking because she has a serious look on her face.

Instead of getting upset she embraces me in a tight hug and gives me a deep kiss. “No. I don’t regret it. It’s just it surprised me. I’m still here to help.”

“OK, let’s go.”

We carefully move and walk like it’s made of glass. It goes without saying that I made sure we are buffed to the teeth with everything possible to buff and shield with at this point while moving. I’ve even done something that shouldn’t be possible…

I added an energy resistance buff to the bag, and a runic shielding spell around the bag acting like a cage, after realizing I can double buffer if I not only buff us. This is going to be interesting. I’m not sure if it will have the full effect of the shielding spell work on the bag, because first the shielding spell is circular shaped and circles and arches have a natural strength added within them when facing stress on the outside of the curved bubble because of how the force interacts with each other. If the force is on the inside going outward from within I’m not sure that will still make it as strong.

We also don’t know if runic shielding is made to be used as a type of containment cage and that might make things even weaker than they should be because the energy circulation feeding the shielding over time is built to be made to interact with a living being at it its center.

Finally we reach back to where we’d fought the goblin before. It’s a bit exhilarating because this is obviously a type of discovery where we could find out something new to help us. Carefully we set down the leather bag and go over to the goblin’s blood spatter from before his friend had taken him.

Asakura sniffs the air, “Yep this is the right spot. I can see his footprints and smell his ugly ass all over this place. I’m surprised I missed it before.”

“Good. Thanks for the confirmation,” I said.

She nodded.

But then I was puzzled. “I’m curious how much your sense of smell has changed since we’ve gotten here,” I said.

“You mean to this place we’re at now, or to this world?” she asked.

“This world.”

“Hmm, I haven’t thought about that too much. Ask me after it’s sort of sunk in more? I’m aware that I’m changing and my body has changed a lot. But some things are still changing so it’s hard for me to perceive how much is my brain softening my noticing the changes,” she suggested.

I changed the subject.

“Now the next part I want you to be super careful on. We don’t have a chance for error or tripping this up,” I said clearing my throat and still sweating a lot.

I hated this next part because it meant I was exposing Asakura to danger. But I have to be ready to recast shields as a bigger priority.

“What do you want me to do…lover?” Asakura asked. She smiled while blushing and gave me a flirty new lover look, but I can’t smile back because I’m worried. She’s excited to say that word. It makes me smile too.

“Treat this next part as if you are walking on broken glass and everything can somehow go up in our face. So I need you to use your sharper senses to smell the energy in the goblin’s blood spatter and see if it smells like the same energy coming from the bag,” I said.

“Is there still any blood spatter though? I thought it dissolves when they die…but because he didn’t die I’m not sure if that would dissolve or not. Also I don’t understand why this is relevant,” she said thinking aloud.

“Don’t worry it is. Also that’s actually an interesting physics question isn’t it?” I said with a smirk.

“Whatever,” she replied.

“Just hang tight. Don’t think it’s safe until I give the signal,” I said.

“OK.”

There’s a brief silence while we’re both trying to process it. Finally we end up shrugging. She goes to inspect and confirm.

“Sure enough the blood didn’t dissolve in this case…I guess because he’s alive still but how could that be I thought we mortally wounded him,” she said.

“We did. But that other shaman may have done something to intervene,” I said.

“Goblins have heal magic?” she questioned.

“No, but they do have sacrifice and blood magic. It’s possible they have something there too to use,” I said.

“Oh.”

The full implication of that just hit both of us, but Asakura voiced it first.

“If he’s still alive will he be back for revenge?” she asked suddenly with her face clouded with worry.

I sighed, “That’s the problem I was reluctant to bring up. Yes I think he will, but I can’t predict when. I’m pretty sure the wound he received earlier was as mortal a wound as you can have and so no doubt his friends saved him. That will buy us some time, but yes he will be back. Plus we have his bag and whatever is in it, plus I still haven’t gotten a look at the necklace yet.”

“Dang it…beating him but just having him want to come back for revenge means we’ll never be able to relax,” Asakura is very upset about this part. Now she’s pacing.

I’m upset too.

“Yeah, it will lead to him trying to probably do some kind of murder in the dark kind of strategy. Since he’s fairly powerful for a goblin and also has limitless numbers of peons to bully I’m sure he’ll be trying it soon whatever form of revenge he does,” I observed dryly.

“Crap. What will we do Shun?” Asakura is now pacing back and forth again.

“Focus. For now be really careful and check the smell please. Let’s just worry about the here and now,” I countered.

She gingerly sniffs at some of the stains. Then she looks a bit sick. “Goblins…don’t bathe very often. I can’t believe you made me do this,” she shook her head. She looks at it with loathing.

“Uh, careful. You don’t want your boobs to sag and droop into his goblin bio filth,” I said while she’s bent over on one knee leaning forward to smell it with her shapely ass pointed towards me. It doesn’t help that the skirt is riding up because of it. Because her boobs are monstrously big she does have to actually worry about them touching the stuff when leaning over or down for any significant distance.

She yelped a bit and jumped up, not wanting to be tainted.

“Ugh, yuck…your right.” Finally she buttons up her shirt making us stop for a few minutes so she can adjust things. She does have to use a few minutes to make sure she didn’t get slimed. It’s a shame really to close up the front but I can’t be having my only ‘provisions’ contaminated with goblin filth.

“Are you sure you aren’t hungry?” she teases me as she’s doing up the two or three buttons that she can still close.

I blush a bit back at her, which she likes. Then she winks back. Wow, being a sex demon is like being on happy pills squared. Her endorphins are going crazy with happy pill effect on her, in addition to my never ending happy trip from being around having beautiful women want to beg to spend time with me. “Thanks but we do really need to get back today,” I said.

She then works over to the bag and smells it. We spend a lot of time circling it for the optimum cover position. Then we want to be careful.

She is about to pull back when the first explosion goes off. It’s got a flashy effect with lots of thick smoke and some sparky ash showers that floated up. Her body flies in the air about fifteen feet and she lands on the ground in a ragged pile. It happened so fast that I wasn’t even able to react in time. But once I saw it, suddenly I’m running forward despite the danger and my heart is racing like mad.

“Are you OK?!” I yelled.

No immediate response. When I reached her I felt and noticed a pulse.

“The…shield …took the damage,” she was coughing heavily. But she had the wind knocked out of her just a couple seconds previously.

Thank goodness she’s OK!

Jeez that scared me. Being alone and losing her really would be pure anguish.

I risked a couple small heals.

It takes all the rest of my healing mana to get her back up on her feet. As of right now I’ve only got about ten percent of my power left, I think…though the ‘recharge’ did help somewhat.

“I’m fine,” she bit her lip.

“A-are you sure?” I am a bit frantic.

She’s dusting herself off finally because initially I wouldn’t let her move. I wanted to make sure first, that there were no neck or spine injuries.

“I-I’m fine. I’m sorry, I should have gone slower,” she said.

“I’m just glad you’re are fine,” I sniffed.

“Maybe you should check me over to make sure I’m fine?” she asked.

She’s puffed up her chest towards me when she said it. She wants me to make out with her I think.

“Uh, you’re fine,” I said.

She frowned, “how do you know? You didn’t even feel me up.”

“But you are acting like you want me to touch you. So that means you are fine or you wouldn’t be like this,” I countered.

“So how should I have acted? Which part did I do wrong? Would you have checked me if I was like in a fake coma?” she asked.

Wow, she’s kind of acting a bit blond, but it’s very cute with how she keeps like…it’s almost like she has stars in her eyes trying to get my attention.

I swear…it’s almost like the pheromones have leveled up…but that can’t be right? I’m shaking my head when I hear her next question, feeling her hand on my back acting motherly.

“Are you OK?” she asked.

Wow, she just got thrown through the air and she’s acting if I’m fine…she’s pure gold. Nobody is as pure as Asakura…even Sunghee gives her a run for her money in loyalty.

“Back to the shaman’s bag…” I said.

“Right… let’s do it,” she’s trying to act tough, but tough mode doesn’t come across as legit when she’s in sexy school stripper mode.

My initial examination was flawed as I look back at the bag. I can see that despite using up the shielding spell and a ton of mana, she would have been toast if I wasn’t a mage. The runic shielding did absorb most of the damage and the burns but she is momentarily loopy…or that’s the pheromones again.

“I don’t want you to move too quickly. Just take it slow,” I said.

Finally she groans and gets closer to me. “Wow that was some trap.”

“So we know it’s trapped,” I said confirming it.

“Yeah…that hurt. Especially hitting the ground like being tossed like a rag doll,” she said.

She’s taking it pretty well so far. The pheromones have also helped her to not realize she could have died. She’s not panicky at all. Even experienced adventurers should be cussing up a storm or scared stupid. But she’s not…

“Sorry…”

“My back is killing me. Do you think you could rub my back a bit and you know…” she started to ask but I shook my head. She winked.

“Not now. But tempting.”

“Oh come on,” she pleaded, except now she’s a bit more upset.

“If I do we’ll never get back and just end up having sex the rest of the day. We do need to focus on business. Come on Asakura, this is important to me. The shaman might have some tools or magic sequences we can use,” I said again for how many times it’s been again?

She sighed, “ah too bad. It was worth the try though. I’m sorry I faked being hurt. I just wanted more love you know. Your magic getting stronger is important to me too.” She’s winked at me just now, so I’m sure she’s fine. It’s a nice comeback.

“Eh? You were faking it to cache in some fun?” I was shocked. I hadn’t pegged her for trying a deception since she was by nature such an innocent person.

“It’s OK. I didn’t mean to be deceptive,” she bit her lip looking guilty.

“Can you put up another shield?” she asked.

Long silence…

“Right,” I said.

“Eh?”

“Well you surely don’t think that there is only one trap do you?” she asked in surprise.

“Actually that’s a good point. I hadn’t thought there’d be more than one trap but that is a possibility isn’t it?” I scratched my chin with my hands. The smart Asakura is undoubtedly the best thing to have right now.

“How many do you think he could have max? Is it a repeating trap or like only two or three?” she asked.

“I’m not sure.”

So we tried something different.

Using the pole we moved the leather bag again. This time we moved it over to use part of the reinforced stone walling of the ruined dwarven walls as a natural barrier between us. It’s not clear how many booby traps are on the bag still.

“The leather bag does still look undamaged,” She noted as we were moving it again.

“It’s obviously got something valuable inside it. Something a mage considers valuable would definitely be helpful and explain the booby traps,” I observed.

“You think there’s any money in there too?” she asked with a hopeful look. Of course because she’s a girl the aspect of money has to factor in there. I groaned inside I think. I’ll have to train her not to become a digger, but she’s still savable.

“It’s…possible,” I nodded while my mind was turning its gears. Actually, now that she’s mentioned it…very, very possible although I was more hoping for mage toys of some kind.

Finally our preparations were in place.

We set up another runic shielding on both me, Asakura, and the bag. Because it’s my own shielding it goes without saying that I can still interact with passing stuff into it that belong to me. This time instead of exposing Asakura to danger we are both ducked down and looking through a type of hole in the stone wall like it’s a window.

But putting the shield up on a non-living object is extremely complicated. It fails a few times first, and then I have to expand the cast time significantly. Finally it worked.

“But how are we going to open the bag from here?” Asakura asked.

“I’ll show you,” I said.

She didn’t know I had worked out my telekinesis spell yet.

Using the maximum distance and bracing for impact I very carefully started using telekinesis to open the bag. My telekinesis is still very weak and low powered. But it can be used top careful undo the knots of the bag, but because of the distance it’s hard to see the knots very well.

In the end I ended up floating a knife through the air and cutting the bag open. The bag is expendable and who would want a goblin’s bag anyway? Also I’m already sure that the bag isn’t part of the magic I’m sensing.

Finally a good half hour later the bag is split open, but I’m sweating like a river running down my face from using so much of my stored energy. We wait a sec and she’s looking at me for some signal to tell if it’s safe to breathe yet.

Finally I gave her a thumbs up. “I think we’re good, but don’t touch the book yet. And no matter what don’t open it.”

“Good job!” Asakura gives me a high five.

“Yes! We did it!”

We’re both happy as someone who just won the lottery.

“But is that really so good of a find? It looks like an old hard cover book of some kind?” Asakura said.

“Wow, classic. You don’t see a lot of hard cover stuff made like this much anymore,” I said.

“My mom liked finding antiques like this,” she chirped.

“Yeah but the book isn’t damaged is it? Don’t you find that odd? After being at the center of the explosion?” I prodded her with the obvious questions.

She finally deadpans realizing it. “Oh…it’s a magic book of some kind isn’t it?”

But it looks ugly as hell. It’s got some kind of weird leather that looks like it’s made from human skin, according to Asakura’s nose. Even from here she could smell it.

“Uh, Shun, you should take a look at this. Um...”

“Yes?

“I think this is human skin, Shun,” she says after sniffing it a few times.

“Gross...”

Neither of us wants to touch it any longer than necessary.

Not to mention we set off two more explosions by opening the book. About that time we can’t do anything more since I’ve only got about four percent of my power left.

“Well at least we cleared all the booby traps right?” Asakura says encouragingly with a bit too much bounce in the chest. She gives me another hug.

“In a manner of speaking,” I said.

“Huh? What?” she asked.

“I mean…yeah, we did.”

We’re both jumping up and down with joy.

“We won! Yes! This is so fun being like on the winning team!” she yelped.

“Really? You think it’s that good?” I asked.

“Well as a kid when you are playing softball or soccer…I couldn’t help but notice the same people always got first. I was never one of those people. But you and I finally are that now in a way. It’s so cool!” she raised a fist to the air.

I didn’t think of that before. I’d been dwelling on the negative because survival by nature forces you to confront harsh realities. I hadn’t been seeing that to someone like Asakura our team was in her mind some version of what she’d just described.

“Are you coming?” she asked me, shaking me out of my internal thoughts of studying the book and her comments.

“Yeah, I’m coming,” I replied.

“I didn’t jump the gun did I? I thought you wanted to get back….so should we go back now?” she asked.

“We could…but I still haven’t gotten a look at the necklace, yet?” I said.

“How do you know it isn’t booby trapped either?” she said darkly and full of distrust.

“Yeah that worries me too. It’s obviously also something magic. I don’t want to risk meddling with that one yet until we can show it to Fox.”

“Fox? Who is that?” She demands. Suddenly her arms are folded across each other under her boobs, pushing her cleavage up.

“My mentor, don’t worry it’s going to be OK.” I decided from today I’m not going to hide the existence of Fox and Sunghee from Asakura yet. But with Rina…I wonder how that’ll go.

“Do I get a mentor too?” She asked.

“Yeah me!” I said squeezing her tightly.

“That’s wonderful,” she sniffs in my scent euphorically and then shivered.

“It’s time to leave,” I said putting the book away.

Even though finding it is a cool trophy I don’t want to mess with it anymore until consulting with Fox. The box and the necklace I still don’t touch with bare skin and put in the demon item box. I won’t open them again till I’m with Fox.

Yeah, there's something definitely going on with that though. It's definitely a magic item. But what could it do? I'm not sure I understood this system yet on what the limits were.