<~> Chapter 16

I sat down next to Bella on a chair in the corner of the tailor’s work room. We had both changed into matching light blue underwear after our measurements were taken. Bella’s panties cupped her cute package, whatever material it was made out of was stretchy like lycra but breathed like cotton.

“Are you doing okay Bella?”

“Yeah… I’m curious about us though.”

“Worked up about that girlfriend comment?”

Bella fidgeted nervously for a moment. “Yeah a bit.”

“Do you wanna be my girlfriend?” I asked while bumping her with my shoulder playfully.

“Is it… okay though?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we’re both girls now. Well kinda…”

“It doesn’t bother me. Does it bother you?” I replied.  

“I don’t know, not really I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Some people won’t like it but I don’t really care about that if you’re okay with it. It’s just, everything seems so different. I was a slave yesterday, now it feels like you’re treating me like a princess. I don’t know what to do.”

“I’m not going to tell you what to do here. If you don’t want to have that kind of relationship with me I’m not going to force you. If you want to have a purely platonic relationship, or even a purely sexual one I would understand,” I said a little playfully. “But I like you a lot. A relationship as lovers, as partners, would be ideal for me but it’s up to you if you reciprocate those feelings.”

There was silence for a few moments before Bella suddenly wrapped her arms around me tight and dug her muzzle into the nape of my neck. “I think I love you Lilith. But being with you makes me feel selfish, like I’m taking advantage of your kindness, I don’t want to be a burden. But I do want to be with you, I want to get stronger so that I can stand next to you and be proud. I want to be your partner, your lover, not just a dead weight follower. So I’ll work hard, give me a chance to make up for everything you’ve given me already.”

I lifted her snout and looked into her beautiful pink eyes, a slightly uncharacteristic look of determination burned in them right now, I leaned forward and kissed her. I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her even more. She melted into my arms, all the tension fading as she let herself be drawn into my kiss. We kept kissing for a while but eventually broke off and went back to sitting next to each other in our underwear, fingers entwined together.

I ran my hand through the fur on the back of her head. “Hey Bella?”

“Yeah?”

“Why do we seem to have all of these important conversations naked or in our underwear?”

She snorted in response, and then busted out laughing. I laughed too, the whole situation feeling incredulous. Met yesterday, had sex last night, and are dating today. It was hard to say if we were going fast or going backwards. I pulled her close and kissed her on the head. Bella turned out to be the perfect height, it was like our bodies fit together like puzzle pieces. Her head fit into the crook of my neck and my arm wrapped around the flare of her hips like it was meant to be there, everything fit together perfectly.

I laced my fingers with hers and leaned into her. “You saved me Bella, even if you were dead weight I’ll always be grateful you were there to help me last night. If you hadn’t been there we might both be in slave collars right now. Besides, I’m sure that your healing magic will help us out a lot, you being dead weight should be the least of our worries.”

“Yeah, and nature magic has other uses too. We’ll have to look into getting a nature magic tome so I can learn some more spells. The system taught me the healing spell I have but I’m sure that there’s much more to nature magic than that.”

“Sounds good. I’m pretty interested in magic in general to be honest. Hopefully books about it don’t cost too much.”

“Books, especially about magic, can be pretty expensive but we might be able to get something from the adventurer's guild. I hear they make so many copies of some of the basic stuff that the prices are cheaper than normal bookstores.”

Interesting, seems like the guild does some sort of mass production to reduce costs for early adventurers. Probably a decently lucrative venture for the stuff they know they’ll sell. This world doesn’t seem to be doing mass production en masse but they at least know enough to do things in batches. Books are probably still copied by hand right now though. Printing press doesn’t scream medieval fantasy so that’s probably not around yet.

Not too much longer after that we finally got our light tan and brown work clothes. Not nearly as fashionable as my other ones but the fabric was obviously tougher. And now that I was wearing a proper bra my heavy breasts didn’t swing around as much. Not to mention they really upped my cleavage game. Bella looked super cute in her own work clothes too but it’s obvious I’m really biased. The clothes made her look like a pretty girl that’s not quite able to pull off the tomboy look and I was loving it.

“Thanks again for the clothes Ameliana, they feel great.”

“Sure thing sweeties. I’ll have the rest of your order tomorrow morning then.”

I took Bella’s hand in mine and walked through the door. “So, the next thing we should do is go to the adventurer’s guild. The guard yesterday suggested we could get some identification there and if we want to fight monsters and stuff for money it’ll probably be a good idea.”

She nodded in response and we walked up to the adventurer's guild. The guild was impossible to miss, it was easily the largest building in town, about twice as long and deep as any other building around it and it was three stories tall. We walked into the building and took a look around. About half of it looked more like a tavern than an official building, there was a full bar and a side door that lead into a kitchen on one end and a six desks with receptionists behind them on the other other. On the wall to the right of the entrance was a large quest board with papers pinned all over it. It reminded me of an anime I had watched, Kona something I think. It struck me as odd that I could almost name an anime but couldn’t begin to remember my own name. I wonder what was up with that.

Bella and I walked up to a receptionist that didn’t seem to be doing anything. She was a tall redheaded human woman dressed in a black dress with a white apron covered in small ink spots. It almost looked like she was wearing a maid uniform but not quite there.

As soon as we walked up to her she started to speak, “Hello and welcome to the Traehall branch adventurer’s guild. How can I help you?”

“Ah, the two of us would like to register to the guild. I don’t really know how anything works here though.”

“Sure thing.” She pulls out two sheets of paper and puts them in front of us. “First you two will have to fill out these forms, once that’s taken care of I’ll ask you a few questions to confirm things, you pay the fee, and then you’ll start out as G rank, or wood tier adventurers. If you’d like to also test your magic affinities we can do that as well for a small fee. Once that’s finished you’ll be able to take Wood or Iron tiered quests or turn in monster subjugation trophies to advance. The tiers are as follows, Wood, Iron, Bronze, Steel, Copper, Silver, and Gold. There are two more tiers, Platinum and Diamond tier, but those are only given out to specific individuals that are proven to stop cataclysmic level events. There hasn’t been anything like that in a long time so I think there only two Diamond tier and three Platinum tier adventurers and three of those five used to work together. Advancement is based on contribution to the guild, not on your strength so even if you can handle tougher quests to start with you are only allowed to complete wood quests for credit unless you’re in a larger party initially. Any questions before we start?”

“Are we allowed to take the magic test before we fill out our forms? And how much are the fees?”

“It would be 10 silver each to register with the guild and 5 silver each to test for magic affinity. We can do that first if you like but you’ll have to pay both fees first.”

I dug through my bag and pulled out 30 silver. A bit pricy for the going rates around here but having some identification would be nice. And I’m dying to know if I can be a mage. I set the coins on the counter in two neat stacks to indicate that it’s for the both of us.

“Alright good.” She took the coins and placed them into a one way safe before stamping each of our unfilled forms. Then she went under the counter for a moment to pull out what looked like a glass tablet. “First place your hand on this and I’ll be able to tell you which of the 12 magic types we test for that you have any ability in.”

I follow her instructions and place my hand on the glass plate. Eleven different spots clearly light up for me all across the top of the tablet with one of them glowing a bit brighter than the rest.

“Huh, It looks like you have a minor affinity in ten of the twelve affinities we test for as well as a medium affinity in light magic specifically. The only thing here you have no affinity for is holy magic.”

”Is that good?”

“Eh… Well it’s definitely interesting. I’ve never seen anyone with this many affinities but with only minor affinities in everything that doesn’t give you a lot of firepower. And the one magic type you do have any affinity in tends to not be very useful, especially for combat. Actually, the fact you seem to have affinity in almost everything means that you could be a very useful ritual mage though. Normally combat casters have strong affinity in one or two magics and might only know a couple of rituals within their magic type. Ritual mages focus on using magic circles to get a wide variety of magic effects that are good for utility rather than combat. Usually the biggest downsides to being a ritual mage is the time they take to activate their magic and that they are limited to the magic types they can convert mana into. But since you have such a wide variety of affinities you could use pretty much any magic circle you could power. Divination, firestarting, pathfinding, terra shaping, and more are all things you could do given enough time and prior studying. Oh, I just got an idea! I’ll be right back!”

Without waiting for a reply she turns around and hurries up the stairs. I turn and look at Bella. “Well I don’t really know what to make of all of this. I was kind of excited to use magic but it doesn’t seem like I’ll be able to throw fireballs.”

“Maybe not but ritual magic can be pretty useful. That cleaning cantrip I showed you earlier is technically ritual magic. Cantrips are basic enough that nearly anyone can use them but being able to convert your mana into any other type could be pretty useful if you took the time to study magic circles. Plus even if you aren’t a combat mage being a ritual caster that can use any magic affinity will make it easier to find party members, assuming they’re okay with beastkin.”

“Hmm, we’ll have to see.”

Saine

Next week some more world building and System talk! Hope you enjoyed it, see you next week!

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