"So this… is how Neeks felt…" Reina grumbled, body twitching and lying face down on the bed after being viciously toyed with by Perrwyn's many tendrils. Her pussy leaked with some sort of liquid pollen and penis sucked dry of cum.

Perrwyn was lying beside Reina, hands at the back of her head and grinning from the sexual conquest. The alraune slowly retracted all the tentacles back to her body.

Today, Reina learned the hard way that alraunes were hermaphrodites. Perrwyn had many vine-like sex organs; her stamen tentacles ejaculated pollen and two pistils tentacles served as receptacles, all of which were used in some way to fuck Reina into a complete mess.

Although alraunes had these functions, they could neither reproduce asexually nor with humanoid beings due to incompatibility in species. The closest things would be forest nymphs, namely dryads, and the only one in the city was Vixie who resided in the high priestess' tree.

Reina was curious how they might react upon seeing one another.

She propped herself up by the elbows and a wave of liquid pollen gushed out from her womb, soaking into the already wet bed sheets. Her breasts were sore and sensitive from being sucked on by the pistil tentacles' four-pronged bite. Even her penis— which admittedly felt really good when it was being sucked— throbbed with a bit of pain after the fact.

A restoration potion took care of that, but the markings remained and would need time to heal on their own.

"Are you satisfied now?" Reina sighed, putting her hands on the loft's railings to keep balanced.

"Very much so. To be able to sexually indulge in sex with one possessing both is more than I can ask for," the alraune replied cheerfully.

With each step that Reina took, pollen dripped from her pussy. A trail of alraune cum was left behind her as she descended to the atelier floor. These were valuable substances that could be used in alchemy, so she collected all that came out of her, and then what little could be scooped up from the ground.

Perrwyn walked past her with a satisfied smile and entered the flower pod to rest. As soon as she was encased in the floral cocoon, a heavy knock came to the front door.

"Coming!" Reina called, racing up to the door to unlock it. She was greeted by two clients, who had shocked expressions and a bulge growing between their legs

"Is this a bad time or an invitation?" one asked, nodding with approval and eyes molesting every inch of her body.

She finally realized her bare predicament and turned as red as a cherry.

"N-Neither!" Reina screamed and slammed the door.

After getting dressed and helping them get what they needed, Reina flipped the sign to 'closed'. She wasn't able to change it last night since Perrwyn took her by surprise, and they spent the rest of the day locked in a fucking spree.

As disappointing as it was for the atelier to remain closed today, she needed to find a way to purify the lake. Her experiments weren't seeing any success, so maybe Perrwyn's interruption was a pleasant change of pace. Even if her ass and pussy were sore from it.

She chucked a magic stone at Perrwyn's flower pod, and a tentacle emerged from the split to consume it.

"You said there's magic in the lake water. How do you mean?" Reina asked.

"Exactly as I meant it," Perrwyn began, preferring to remain inside the pod as she spoke. "There is a wealth of magic emanating from it, such that an alchemist like yourself would classify that substance as a reagent."

"What about the murky stuff? Is this some sort of polluted filth?" she pressed further.

The alraune was unsure.

Another thing that had been on Reina's mind was the angry voice. Whoever it was called Lake Hosal her lake and was able to use magic. If she wasn't a witch, then…

Reina scoured through her bookshelves until she came across a witch's encyclopedia on creatures living in the forests. An undine was what she was looking for. The page was not very comprehensive, and most were hypothesis and conjectures.

Undines were rare after all. More so than forest nymphs.

These creatures were said to be created through powerful and ancient alchemy, consequently giving them an affinity to magic and allowing them to control the element they were composed of. They lived in places with large bodies of water like waterfalls, lakes, rivers, and ponds. The few recorded in history were said to have escaped the confines of land and lived out in the sea or near islands.

Then the creature at Lake Hosal had to have been an undine. But how did it get there if Reina wasn't the one who created her through alchemy?

The rest of the afternoon was spent identifying the composition of the soil and water samples collected from the lake, including a dead fish she managed to catch when Reggie's boat capsized.

It concerned her that the gills contained some kind of algae and mulch. When dried, it became a coarse, powdery substance. Almost like… sawdust?

"Wait a minute…" Reina mumbled to herself as a bulb lit in her head.

She filled a bucket full of clear water and dumped the sawdust inside. It soon clumped into mulch which sank to the bottom from its own weight. A very small droplet of plant growth serum was added next. Just as she suspected, a black cloudiness bloomed just below the water's surface.

"This murkiness is a subaquatic algae. The sawdust killed all the fish by clogging up their gills, and algae bloomed without natural predators to keep their numbers in check, then bloomed exponentially in a short time from feeding off the mulch."

It all made sense now.

No wonder the undine was pissed off. The sawdust was ruining Lake Hosal by upsetting its natural balance. Vegetation around the lake wasn't affected because the soil and sediments served as filters, and it wasn't like algae and sawdust inhibited plant growth to begin with.

"Who the hell's dumping sawdust into Lake Hosal?" Reina asked aloud the next question plaguing her mind.

It would be best to bring this to the high priestess' attention. 

Gale was in the main worship hall when Reina arrived. The elven high priestess was tending to a group of elderly who were praying in front of Vessyra's carved wooden statue. Reina thought to wait in the back until she was finished, but the priestess glanced over her shoulder and their gazes met.

They nodded to each other, and Reina sat in the backmost pew and waited until the congregants were done. 

"Ladies," Gale beckoned to three priestesses who were in the process of sweeping the chamber. "Escort these gentle elders back home, if you will."

The three of them set their chores aside and gave a hand to the ones who had a hard time walking on their own. As they left, Gale stayed behind and took a seat next to Reina.

"What brings Vessyra's esteemed alchemist here today?" the elven priestess asked.

"I wanted to inform you about Lake Hosal." Reina provided a vial of the lake water to Gale and explained in short what she discovered.

Gale listened intently without a word until the end. "That some was amiss at Hosal I had already been made aware of. The revelation about wood shavings and algae bloom is new to me. I assume you can do something about restoring the waters?"

That was going to be the tough part.

The entire fish population had been wiped out. Algae grew at an exponential rate. Reina would need to somehow remove all the mulch and eliminate enough algae, then reintroduce fish from other lakes into Hosal. A massive environmental undertaking.

But daunting as this task was, Reina was nevertheless excited to tackle it.

"You can leave it to me," she said, sucking in a breath of determination.

"Very good. In the meantime, I shall have people investigate who might be discarding sawdust into Lake Hosal. The list of suspects narrows down to those who work with wood." Gale stood up and smoothed out the creases on her sheer robes. "Regarding the undine, I rather not risk lives to confront it. May I leave that to you as well?"

"I'll think of something." Her head was already brewing with ideas. The creature was intelligent, which meant she could converse with it and hopefully come to an understanding. With any luck, she might convince the undine to help with the restoration of Lake Hosal.

"Goddess go with you." The high priestess bowed, then exited the chamber.

Reina was about to leave us until she noticed a hooded figure standing in front of Vessyra's statue. Had one of the elderly been left behind? A quick look around the chamber and no other priestess was around to take care of them.

"Would you like me to call a priestess to help you home?" she asked the stranger.

"Oh, with my predicament I need more than just an escort and prayer," the familiar whimsical voice said. She spun around, one hand on her hip, a smile was all that could be seen from underneath the hood.

"You're the shrouded witch who visited me from before," Reina squeaked. "If you're here about a philosopher's stone, I don't have any."

The mysterious witch shrugged and chuckled. "Oh, I know. You used it to cure a bunch of wild elves' limp dick syndrome and had sex with them."

Reina expected her to be much angrier and disappointed. She appeared more amused than anything.

"I'm guessing you'll be dropping in on me unannounced like this more often. So if you knew I didn't have what you were looking for, why did you show up?"

"I've come to warn you, actually." The witch flew up to and sat on the statue's outstretched arm. "The undine that you seek to confront, she has within her a philosopher's stone."