"So, did your skill rank up, Eve?" Vel asked as she flopped onto her back and stared up at me from the bed where she lay sprawled out.

Before responding to her, I took a moment not only to ogle the exhausted, sweaty body of the slender young woman before me but to also take a glance at the notifications that had popped up after our fun had reached its conclusion.

Sensual Massage has reached Rank 13

Sex Toys has reached Rank 5

Sex Toys has reached Rank 6

Sex Toys has reached Rank 7

"Oh, wow! That was actually quite a productive use of our time, if I say so myself. Sex toys ranked up three times, it's now rank 7."

"Wait, what?" Vel gasped, completely taken aback by this. "How did your skill rank up three times? Even with your increased sexual skill growth from your class, that seems excessive."

"Not all of my general skills are increasing that fast; some are just growing faster than others. I think it might have to do with my past life and the experiences I had on Earth." I began to explain the theory I had developed after first noticing this phenomenon when it originally occurred with sensual massage yesterday after I masturbated in the shower.

"It seems that whenever I apply the knowledge and experience from my past life, it helps my skills grow. Although that said, it only seems to be applicable to sensual massage and sex toys, because I don’t have any previous experience with my other general skills. And even then, I think I have reached the end of what my past experiences can do for my sensual massage skill."

"Gods above, that’s amazing. How do you keep getting more and more astounding with every moment I spend with you?" Vel flirted as she lay there on the bed, giving me a very hungry look.

The young elven woman’s hands even began to slowly trail down to her pussy and the mess I had made of it. It was as clear as day that she wanted more, and although I wanted more too, there was still something we needed to do.

"As much as I would love to continue giving you orgasm after orgasm and see just how high we can get my skill ranks, your Dad’s waiting for us, remember?" I reminded her as I leaned down and gave her a consolatory kiss, only a quick one though, lest I get pulled in by my overly horny state and have my way with the young woman yet again.

"Do we have to go?" Vel playfully pouted as she slung her arms around me, not letting me stand back up, which was making it harder and harder to not just give in to my desires. "I’d much rather stay here with you than go out and talk with Dad."

"Come on, lazy butt." I teased her back as I gave her another quick kiss. "Don’t you want to find out all the things that your father has been keeping from you?" 

"Ah, fine… But you’ve got to make it up to me later, okay?" Vel said as she released me from her loving hold.

Truthfully, though, it was clear that this whole exchange wasn’t really about her not wanting to go talk to her father. I knew for a fact that she was extremely excited about learning all the things he kept from her and having more trust placed in her. No, she had only acted this way because she wanted a bit more attention from her loving, sexy girlfriend. Not that I could really complain because I would have loved to give her more attention if only we had the time.

"Oh, I don’t think that will be too hard. Making you cum is quite easy." I teased her as I activated freshen up and began to clean up the mess I had made of Vel, her bed, and the two dildos.

"You're not that hard to make cum either," Vel responded in kind, but with an added light smack on my butt for good measure.

Getting spanked like that just made it more than apparent how Goddamned horny I was and how much I really wanted to get off. Although I did quite a bit for Vel, I hadn’t been touched in the slightest and was still extremely aroused. However, my own sexual gratification would have to wait a little while longer.

From there, Vel and I finished cleaning up and went on to get dressed. Vel simply put on the dress that she was wearing before as well as the same pair of panties she was wearing too. Though, she did ask me to freshen up her panties, which I refused and told her that I wanted her to wear the panties she had made a mess of for the rest of the day. That seemed to excite her just as it did me, which was more of a problem since I was already really worked up.

As for the clothes I put on, I no longer just had one oversized, borrowed shirt to choose from, but a selection of clothes appropriated from those they previously belonged to. Because most of the clothes weren’t really my style, in the end, I went for something simple: a basic white tee shirt and a pair of jeans. Well, technically they weren’t jeans, but they looked close enough that I was just going to call them that. Most of the clothing I had seen since I woke up in this world was actually like that, which was looking like they were of a similar style to what I could have found on Earth but were slightly more crude in make, to the point that they also wouldn’t have looked out of place in a medieval-adjacent time period. 

The fit of my new clothes wasn’t exactly perfect, but they were still relatively comfortable and much better than just wearing a shirt. In fact, the tight tightness of these clothes only accentuated my curves even more. Not only did the jeans make my ass look absolutely amazing, but the thin white shirt was so thin that you could see the bumps of my nipples through them, which drew attention to the fact that you could vaguely make out the colour of my areola through the fabric as well. 

Truthfully, that last thing wouldn’t have been the best if I planned to go out in public, but when it came to tantalising and seducing a certain man, it was perfect. Of course, underneath it all, I was also wearing one of the pairs of lace panties for that exact purpose. Panties which were already quite drenched from just how horny and wet my pussy was. Not that there was much fabric in the panties to get wet; they were really skimpy, after all, but that was just what made them so sexy.

Now that the two of us were cleaned up and properly dressed, we finally left the bedroom again after our extended distraction. When Vel and I found her father sitting at the dinner table in the kitchen, it was clear as day he had heard everything we got up to. The man was as stiff as a board and blushing bright red.

He couldn’t even look his daughter in the eyes as she took a seat at the table and said. "Sorry, we took so long, Dad."

Damien grumbled something in response, but whatever it was he said was lost to both his daughter and me. To try and relax the mood a little, I gave a little spin and asked him. "What do you think of my new look, Damien?"

"Ah… You look, um… You look good." He responded after giving me a quick glance up and down, during which I caught his eyes briefly pausing at my tits, or more specifically, my visibly stiff nipples poking at the thin fabric of my shirt.

"Oh, and what do you think of my new panties?" I asked, catching the man off guard when I lowered the front of my pants enough to give him a good look at my lace-covered crotch. So good a look that he was no doubt aware of just how damp my panties were.

Damien's eyes were affixed to my panties for a good couple of seconds as he blushed even more and shifted awkwardly in his seat. "Ah… good… they look good as well." He mumbled as his daughter just giggled, more than a little amused by my exchange with her father. It’s really a good thing that she’s not the jealous type and doesn’t mind me flirting with her father like this when she is around.

"Thank you," I gave the man a warm flirty smile as I pulled my pants back up and took a seat at the table next to Vel, across from her father.

As soon as we were all seated at the table, Damien launched right into the business at hand, not even needing a second to recover from the flirtatious teasing I had just sent his way. "So, I figured the best place to start would be to explain why it is that I’ve kept us here, secluded in the forest for all this time. The short explanation is that I kept you here because I wanted to keep you safe, Velyna, but not just you. It is important that your mother’s amulet, your amulet, is kept safe."

Vel’s eyebrows rose as she clucked the gold and emerald jewellery hanging from her neck, where it resided most of the time. "My amulet? Why would my amulet need to be kept safe?" 

"Because it is a key to a very powerful place. A place which would be exploited to horrible ends if it fell into the wrong hands." Damien answered, but before he could go on to explain, I interjected, realising what it was he was talking about.

"It’s a key to that Crossroad place, isn’t it, the place those men were looking for?"

"That’s right." Damien nodded. "I’m not sure how much they know about the Crossroads and what it truly is, but it’s not exactly a secret that the Crossroads is here within the forest. However, most people just presume that it is an old dungeon from a thousand years ago. One that can’t be found and, because of that, one most would assume destroyed a long ago."

"What do you mean by dungeon?" Although I was the one that asked this, Vel also had a curious look stretched across her face. Technically, I had a fair idea of what he could have meant by the term dungeon given the amount of  time I spent gaming back on Earth, but it was better to hear these things and know for a matter of fact than to assume and be wrong.

"Oh, right, yes. I should explain that first." Damien deviated from his previous explanation to enlighten us on this matter. "Dungeons are essentially multi-floor, extradimensional spaces where monsters spawn much more frequently. They are a bit more complicated than that, but all you really need to know is that many different world powers and organisations regularly send people referred to as delvers into dungeons to hunt and exterminate the monsters in them because of how valuable monster cores are. Core’s and by extension the dungeons are so valuable that many cities are built around dungeons, with the greatest of cities being built around the greatest of dungeons."

Vel and I just nodded in understanding as Damien went back to his original explanation. "The reason the Crossroad needs to be kept safe and most records give the impression that it is just a dungeon is because of the fact the Crossroad is exactly as it sounds, a crossroad, one which is linked to the seven oldest and greatest dungeons on the continent, and by extension the capitals of many of the most powerful nations on the continent."

"Not only can the one who holds the keys use the Crossroad to explore any of the seven dungeons, but they can freely use any of the dungeons to move to any of the other dungeons' locations. If the keys fell into the wrong hands, or if their real purpose became common knowledge, it could spark a war the likes of which the continent hasn’t seen in ages. The ability to send armies and trade instantaneous across the continent is not something any great power would ignore."

"You said, keys, as in plural. Is my mother’s amulet not the only one?" Vel asked, holding tight onto the amulet in her hands the entire time.

"Although I only know the location of this one, there are actually seven in total. One for each of the dungeons. The keys serve two purposes: allowing a key bearer to actually find the Crossroad, and unlocking travel to and from the dungeon it is tied to."

A few seconds of silence passed as Vel and I took in the information and processed it. That said, I still had a great many questions, but since Vel didn’t seem ready to voice her own questions yet, I asked mine first. "Okay, so I understand why the amulet could be dangerous if the wrong people got a hold of it, but why does that mean you had to keep Vel isolated out here? The amulet belonged to Vel’s mother before her, right? Did she lead an isolated life in the middle of nowhere too?"

"She didn’t." Damien's tone became a bit more sombre as he answered my questions to the best of his ability. "Kehlana, Velyna’s mother, carried the amulet with her for most of her life as she wandered from place to place before eventually settling down in the capital."

"During all that time, Kehlana didn’t know what the amulet really was, other than it was an heirloom that was passed down through the elven tribes before they were driven out of their forest homes, and that it was passed from mother to daughter thereafter. That is, it was passed from mother to daughter whenever the baleful curse didn’t rear its ugly head. We learned the true nature of the amulet together only a few months before you were born, Velyna, which was around the time when we decided to get this house and come live here while we raised you. However, at the same time, we also learned what kinds of people were seeking it and what they would do to anyone standing in their way. After that, neither of us had much interest in rejoining society at large."

"Baleful curse?" I raised an eyebrow curiously as I had not heard that term before.

"The ancient elves of old, who built the Crossroads and ruled an empire that spanned the continent, were brought low by an infamous lichlord known as Urdoth Sinn a thousand years ago," Damien began to respond to my question with a history story, not at all how I was expecting him to go about it. "It is said that when Urdoth Sinn led his horde of undead to the forest cities, the great protectors of the forest met him in battle and granted him a final death that he could never come back from. In his dying breath, Urdoth Sinn cursed all of elvenkind, creating the baleful curse which would haunt all elven births for the rest of time.

"I'm not sure how much of that is true or not, because it happened over a thousand years ago, and much of the records were lost when the human nations under the elven empire decided to exploit the havoc the baleful curse and undead wreaked in order to drive the elves from their forest homes. However, elven births have been plagued by death ever since. No matter how high level the parents are or whatever healing magic is used, there is always a great chance that the mother, child, or even both will just die as if their very soul was ripped from their body. Only one in five elven childbirths occur without tragedy sticking. Although, that’s only with pure blood elven parents. Since I was a human, Kehlana and I thought we might have a better chance of being lucky and avoiding the worst."

A look at the sad expressions both father and daughter were sharing told me all I needed to know without him having to explicitly say it. That Kehlana’s death hadn’t just been a horrible accident during childbirth but was caused by this baleful curse.

I didn’t ask any further questions at that time. I understood enough of the situation at hand and why Damien had done what he had. Still, in my opinion, that didn’t excuse him for keeping his daughter in the dark for so long. He could have easily explained this to her much sooner so that she could make her own decisions. He didn’t need to wait until she was twenty years old to tell her all this. However, it wasn’t really my place to say any of that to them. This was a family matter, and I was just lucky to be let in on their secrets.

The fact that they trusted me enough to do that despite only knowing me for a little over a day was heartwarming, even if the secrets were rather serious ones.