“Sorry to disappoint you thots,” Shinsuke said. “But you won’t be taking the master engineer bitch with you.”

He could have phrased that one better, but I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. The CELL-inners came to my rescue yet again. Maybe I should give them more slack.

“It’s good the demons didn’t kill you all,” Luciana hissed. “Ripping your balls off ourselves will be so much more satisfying!” She lunged at the adventurer in a blur of dark and blonde.

Shinsuke’s shield shattered from the impact.

“No wonder you bitches are single,” Shinsuke said, enraging her to lunge at him again.

He swung his sword towards her neck, but the deputy captain simply grabbed the blade like it was a dull stick.

She pulled her other hand back for a gut shredding thrust like the one that did in Urabus.

But her hand was stopped.

By Shinsuke’s hand.

Shinsuke’s black, demonic hand.

“What?!” The shocked Luciana exclaimed and jumped back away from the equally demonic-powered adventurer.

“Now look what you made me do,” the CELL-inner said.

“Um, Shinsuke? You’re on our side, right?” I asked.

“I’m on the side of all men,” he replied. “And it’s Grundevard!”

“Yeah, Grundevard,” I corrected myself. “Forgive my Kansai accent.”

“How do you have the same power as us you virgins,” the deputy commander demanded.

“You think lord Zereg-Atsum will make a deal with you? A woman? He was just using you and your hormonal brains to achieve his own ends. We are his true chosen allies. Fellow masculine males.”

But at least he wasn’t after Violetta.

“We will bring the master engineer thot to the prince and be given even more power, the power to make all of you self-entitled thots accept your place in the world!”

Or maybe I gave these guys too much slack.

"Now then," Shinsuke said as he assumed a battle posture. "Begone Thots!"

"Begone thots!" repeated the rest of the CELL-inners.

“Men will sell their souls to demons before they see women as their equals! Kill them all!” Luciana roared.

“Entitled man haters!”

“Privileged misogynists!”

The two groups launched at each other with mad, blind, bestial fury, with blurs of darkness, flashes of swords and claws, and 3 humans caught in the middle.

“Can they see better than us through the darkness spell?” I whispered to the terrified healer still brandishing her light spell.

“What? I don’t think so. They only have the touch of demons, they’re not demons themselves.”

“Good. Turn it off. Now.”

In an instant the darkness was back, no more than two meters of visibility.

It was our only chance.

I grabbed both girls’ hands.

“Isabella, you have to run back and tell Pyra what’s happening,” I said.

“B-but, these lunatics are everywhere!” she protested.

A bolt of lightning flew right past us.

“I know, but the path ahead might be even more dangerous, and staying here is a death sentence,” I said as dark figures rushed back and forth past us.

“B-but…”

“And my friend Midas really likes you. I don’t want to see you get hurt. Go find Pyra!”

 “I…”

“Run!”

The three of us rushed off, Isabella back towards the pit where the captain was hopefully still alive, and the two of us up the river and towards our goal.

We then ducked as two demon-powered gender warriors clashed above us.

"Accept your submissive nature thot!"

"Accept your forced sterilization wife beater!"

Once they passed, I scrambled back to my feet, only to hear Violetta scream behind me.

One of the CELL-inners, cut in half at the waist, grabbed her leg.

“You won’t get away, whore,” he gargled through a mouthful of blood.

“Use your charisma spells!” the master engineer squealed.

“I can’t!”

“What do you mean you can’t?!”

A ball of flame exploded above us and one of the demonic RFF members came crashing into the river like a burning meteor, complete with pieces detaching as she went.

“I don’t know how!”

“What?! Ahhh!!”

The CELL-inner grabbed her other leg that was trying to kick him in the head. “I can see your panties!” he laughed

Violetta screamed, pulled two of the revolvers attached to her legs and emptied their entire contents into bastards face, screaming the whole way and only quieting a little after she realized she was empty, and her enemy was dead.

I helped the pink haired girl up and we resumed our hasty retreat up the river.

“What do you mean you can’t any charisma spells?! Are you out of mana? Spell slots?” Violetta asked as we ran.

“No, I mean I literally don’t know how to cast a spell!”

“How do you not know how to cast any spells?!”

“I never had to learn!”

“This makes no logical sense!”

“I know!”

We paused to catch our breath once the sounds of fighting were firmly behind us.

“How did you cast Charm on those women then?” Violetta asked, panting. “And the dragon!”

“It just sort of happened. Like I wanted to do it badly enough, and it happened,” I explained.

“That’s how spells are cast!”

“Is it?”

She stared at me, absolutely dumbfounded. My sheer incompetence managed to trigger the most primal part of the human brain: the 'You’re not doing it right!' part.

“How could you possibly reach your level without knowing how to cast a spell? This is absurd!”

I shrugged. “No one ever bothered to teach me, and I didn’t really care to learn.”

“I… I can’t… how are you supposed to protect me then?”

I tightened my grip on her hand and looked into her disbelieving eyes with the full power of my sincerity. I raised the pistol she gave me. “With everything I have.”

And so we ran on blindly through the darkness towards the waterfall and demon gate that were supposed to be there.

“Though while we are on the topic,” I said. “How do I cast a spell? Miss teacher.”

“It’s so simple though! You just, uh, focus on it.”

“So I just think about it really hard?”

“No. Do you need to think to move your hands or legs? It’s the same thing.”

“Ah, I know exactly what you mean.”

“Really?”

I really did. “Yes. Where I come from we call it awareness.”

“Well, you do that, and if you want to cast it at a higher level, you also call it out at the same time by saying cast, then the name of the spell.”

“The name of the spell? Like Charm?”

“Yes. Do you know which spells you’ve learned?”

“Learned?”

I wasn’t looking at her, as we were still heading to our destination, but I could feel her examining me in disbelief.

“You can’t be real. You are the most impossible man I’ve ever met.”

“Good,” I said, smiling back to her. “I aim to be at least one ‘the most’ thing for any woman I meet.”

She blushed as she came down from her explaining high. “T-the spell are listed on your adventurer card…”

“Good to know. But we won’t have time to go through them. We’re here.”

The sound of the waterfall was unmistakable. What was even more unmistakable was a green and blue glow coming from inside it, visible even through the Darkness spell.

“I think we found the gate,” I said, stepping towards the sound of the falling water.

There was no clear path to walk, so we’d have to wade through the shallower water to reach it.

“You might want to keep your pistols from the water.”

Violetta quickly followed me, three pistols and another grenade I don’t know where she pulled from in her hands.

As we reached the actual fall, the girl paused.

“Um, is there a way around?”

“Doesn’t look like it. The water is pretty shallow though, just have to go through and it looks like the cave is right there,” I said and went through the shower.

There cave behind it was quite large and well lit from a very obvious portal near the right side wall, a strange swirling combination of blue and green mists, with some flashes of lightning to complete the look.

There wasn’t a single demon around. Presumably Gdol-Zayin pulled all of them for ambushing and fighting us.

There was also no Violetta.

I stepped back through the waterfall to find her still standing outside in the pool of water coming up to her knees.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I… I can’t…” she mumbled.

“Can’t what? The portal is right there, let’s close it.”

“I  can’t… the water…” her face was redder than I’ve ever seen it as she mumbled the words. “The water…”

It took me a second, but a glance down to where the edges of her dress were floating in the water said it all.

The water made her dress completely transparent.

It would be a sight I very, very much wanted to see, but one that Violetta was clearly not ready to show. Yet. Apparently even at the price of failing our mission.

So I improvised.

“Here, let’s try this.”

I went into the shower of water and did my best to create a sort of human arch with my upper body and my arms around my head.

Which didn’t work as the water just flowed down both my sides.

“Uh…”

“Ok, plan B.”

I took off my shirt, a deep red button-up and the brown leather vest that was over it, and handed both soaked items to Violetta.

“Here. They’re soaked, but they won’t show anything.”

I did not, in fact, forget to tell you what I was wearing, my friends. It was merely not an important part of the story until this point. Trust me.

The girl held both pieces of clothing in her hands, but was still not moving. She was blushing redder than ever from me going shirtless right in front of her so suddenly, and after a few such moments she looked down to her legs, then back to me.

“I don’t mind removing my pants,” I said. “But do you want me to remove them?”

“N-no! That’s ok!” she squealed. She quickly put on my vest to cover her top, and tied my shirt around her waist like an apron to cover the bottom.

Finally, the two of us moved under the waterfall and into the cave.

As soon as we did, the master engineer’s eyes went wide.

“Whoa.” She rushed over to the big, glowing scar in the fabric of time and space. “An actual gate. A portal through the weave of creation!”

“I take it you’ve never seen one?” I said, walking behind her.

The makeshift apron of my shirt covered her front, but the lower back of her dress received no such protection.

The practically transparent fabric revealed her lovely peach of an ass and the beck of her wonderfully clean and snug white underwear.

A heartwarming sight.

“Not from this close, never,” she said, still in awe. She looked around the gate with the giddiness of a child on Christmas morning.

“But you know how to close it, right?” I asked. I was a professional. No amount of wonderfully shaped asses could make me lose sight of important matters.

“I should be able to. I just… want to…” she said as she drew her hand closer and closer to the portal.

When it was just a hair’s breath away from the swirling mist, a small flash of lightning went between her hand and the portal, startling her slightly.

“If only I could study it more. Understand how it works. The very truth of the universe could be uncovered!” she said, her green eyes wide and reflecting the glow of the portal.

“But not this particular one. This one we have to close,” I reminded her.

“Y-yes, of course,” she said, snapping out of her mesmerized state. She reached for the back of her dress, where a small pouch was attached, then stopped. Her hand patted the back of her dress, the very much soaked and very much transparent fabric.

She looked at me, her face once more completely red, and I looked back, projecting as much calm and ‘it’s not a big deal’ energy as I could.

The law of state transference is powerful, but was not powerful enough to overcome this girl’s sheer embarrassment.

“Stand over there,” she instructed quietly, pointing to one side of the gate.

I acquiesced and calmly took position next to the portal, while she crab walked backwards to make sure I couldn’t see her rear until she stood a short distance from the portal.

“So how does one close a rift in space time?” I asked, trying to get her into work mode.

“Well,” she began, going for her side pouch again. “As an artificer, there is one way.” She pulled out, a small metal tripod, and placed it between her and the portal, then she pulled out a thumb-sized, opaque white crystal, and carefully positioned it on top of it.

The precision of her work was remarkable. Not a single unnecessary finger movement, not even a slight tremble, and the crystal was placed perfectly still into place.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“This is a crystal of imat—“ she began, but then the crystal began to vibrate, cutting her off.

And it wasn’t only the crystal.

The demon gate beside me also vibrated, and with it, it seemed, all of creation followed the example.

It didn’t feel like an earthquake. More like leaning your head against the window of a bus, except everything was doing it.

The vibrations intensified, and gained a rhythm, a beat even.

Sudden intensity, then ease, intense, and then ease again.

It was like the rhythm of… footsteps.

Bolts of green and blue lightning shot in all directions from the portal as the mists began to part. A leg came through, then a head, and then the rest of the body.