I feel myself floating in the air in the everlasting darkness, unable to move my body at all in the coldness.

 

I continue drifting for who knows how long until suddenly my arms respond to my calls and reach out.

I hold onto something warm, it's comfortable, it feels like I'm holding onto a cloud while drifting about.

I want to stay like this forever.

 

A bright ray of light suddenly peeks out from the darkness, stopping my drifting, I feel the tug of gravity pulling on me.

I feel like I'm free-falling straight to the ground. No! What do I do?

I start seeing myself falling straight towards the light. I try to hug on to the light as I'm about to collide with it, I succeed and feel the light to be warm and soft on my limps, forehead, and the tip of my nose.

Wait a second, this warmth and softness feels familiar.

 

---

 

I strongly open my eyes and the sight of a face very close to my own enters my view, causing panic in me for a second before realizing who it was, Faris, the slave I bought yesterday.

I take a moment to observe my surroundings, our foreheads are leaning against each other while I gripped firmed onto Faris with both my hands and left leg, I'm holding her like a body pillow. I can feel her soft skin throughout my body, along with her heartbeat, and breathing from when she exhales.

Watching her sleep peaceful, I get reminded of what happened last night. I sure said a lot of embarrassing and cheesy lines but I don't regret it one bit. Faris is mine, I will do my best to protect make her happy.

She is the first person I feel like I can rely on, trust, and confide with since coming to this world, maybe it's just because I think of her as my slave...

But I don't care.

I can finally feel at ease, like coming back home from a tiring day out, and I don't plan on losing it. I tighten my hold on her at that thought and nuzzle my forehead against hers.

"Hmmm..."

Faris shakes at my movement before slowly opening her eyes. Oops, I wanted to let her continue sleeping, considering she just had her first night, but I guess it's too late now. Her eyes look at me blanky before widening from realization and her face starts to blush lightly.

"..."

"...Sorry master, I should've been the one to wake up before master and be the one to wait upon you..."

"Don't worry about it."

Faris looks down but I quickly move my free hand to pull her chin back up and caress her face. As she was about to say something, I deny her the opportunity and seal her lips with mine, pushing my tongue into her, ravaging it as I please.

"Hmm...mm mas...ter..."

Her soft moans leak from her mouth occasionally, prompting me to be more aggressive.

Not bothering to keep track of time, I have no idea how long our tongues wrestled and only stopped when she needed to catch her breath but my hand does not stop stroking her cheeks.

"New rule, if you ever want to wake me up in the future, that's the only acceptable way to do it."

"...Hah...yes master."

Sexy morning kiss routine, get.

"Does it still hurt from last night?"

"...No, I think master's healing spell did its job overnight, thank you"

I bring Faris closer into my arms and whisper in her ears.

"I. love. you. my Faris, I meant everything I said last night, did you mean the words you said to me?"

Faris shyly nods, making her seem so vulnerable that it lights a fire in me, resulting in the beginning of a new round of assault.

Let's stick to the basics, for now, let's try out some doggy style.

 

---

 

We head down for breakfast after cleaning up our love nest, well, the best we could anyways. We couldn't wash out the red stain on the sheets even with soap, sorry innkeeper.

Maybe I should start looking for a place to rent, it would be more convenient in a lot of ways, and will have more room for my future companions.

"Which dungeon are we going to today master?"

Faris always becomes more assertive when talking about dungeons, I just need to figure a way to bring out more of that assertiveness to other topics.

"Let's go hunt some goblins at Greens Filth, fighting humanoids is the best to learn about each other's abilities, and to form our framework of how we will fight together."

"Sounds good master."

We settle on a light meal before heading out on Blacky to the dungeon. With a horse as a method of transportation, it only took about an hour before we enter the camps around the dungeon.

Before entering the dungeon, we found a stable that specifically caters to adventurer about to enter the dungeon to leave Blacky with, costing me a silver coin.

Faris and I both place our hands on the statue and mutter the words to enter.

"Enter."

The familiar feeling of being teleported remains the same even though I had an extra party member now.

"Faris, we'll take turns having one fight monster and the other observe to get a gauge, you can start first."

"I'm ready anytime master."

Faris takes the lead as we quietly trek through the forest. The greenery is sparse enough to let lots of light through so it'd be hard for monsters to sneak up on us.

With one of her short-sword drawn while the other comfortably rests in the scabbard to her waist, Faris perceptively moves around in her surroundings, trying to sense the presence of anything nearby. All I hear is the rustling of leaves as the wind blows but Faris signals me that she found her prey and is stalking towards it while I follow a little behind.

I find her crouched in front of me staring ahead and by the time I am about to reach her, she makes one swift flicking movement and a dagger that was strapped around her thighs disappears. At the same moment, she sprints to the front and I make it in time to see her sword piercing through the back and into the heart of the poor goblin who is still clutching his wooden spear.

That was pretty amazing to have watched the thin Faris lunging forward at that speed and accurately thrusting into a vital point. Definitely can't judge this book by its cover.

To the side of the scene where Faris stabbed the goblin, another goblin is there lying on the ground with a dagger sticking from the back of his head. I didn't even hear the goblins' struggles and two of them were taken out, Faris sure is pretty strong, she is a lot higher level than me after all.

With that exceptional display, I get a bit conscious for my turn, I'm still too weak. At this rate, it's going to be a while before I can live up to my words of being able to protect Faris.

"How was it master?"

"That was awesome, you're much stronger than the me who just fumbles through close combat. Watching your movement felt like watching art."

"Thank you master! Here, the mana crystals."

Faris skillfully removes the mana crystals from the goblin's head with a happy smile on her face and hands them over to me, I put it away in my space ring and takes the lead for my turn to fight. Here we go, please don't let me embarrass myself in front of Faris.

I continue in the same direction we were already heading for a while, finding nothing. I need to find a way to detect monsters or something, all I can hear is the rustling of the trees. Another five minutes and everything seems to be unchanged when suddenly the rustling grew louder and a figure pounces straight at me from a nearby bush. I instinctively point my spear at the figure pouncing on me and cast an electric spell to form on the tip.

The figure, having already jumped off at me is unable to change course, ramming straight into my spear but pushes me down onto the ground from the impact. I establish eye contact with the figure which is a wolf, staring at me with hostility but unable to move but spasms while being supported by my spear running through his abdomen. I pour more mana and increase the amount of electric shock to finish him off before pushing the wolf off of me.

Standing up, my middle section is now covered in wolf blood as the smell of slightly burnt meat enters my nose. I look back to confirm the status of Faris and see her standing there with a dagger in her hand, I helplessly give her a smile. Okay, plan to not embarrass yourself, failed, the plan to get seemingly overpowered by a wolf before turning the tables, major success.

"Let's just say I don't have much experience in dealing with surprise attacks."

"It's okay master, I will protect you!"

I'd much rather say that line to you than have you deliver it to me.

I wash out the parts soaked in blood as best I can with my water magic, while Faris collects the mana crystal from the wolf for me.

Next up is Faris again, after her earlier display, I'm not even the slightest worried for her as there is simply no challenge in the first floor. She quickly picks up the trail of her prey and skillfully climbs up a small hill to get a better vantage point.

I finally catch up with her and spot her targets, a rare group of five goblins. Before I can ask if she is okay handling all of them by herself, she springs into action. This time I can see more clearly her movements, quickly throwing a dagger and the short-sword in her hand one after the other consecutively at two different targets, then draws her other sword and stabs it into the center mass of one of the goblin beside the one she hit with her thrown sword. Three down, two to go.

With her sword in one of the goblins, the remaining two goblins try to flank her and stabs her from behind, making her do an elegantly spins and throws the goblin that is still stuck to the end of her sword at one of the approaching spearman, pushing him back into his ally for a moment. She takes the earned time to complete her movement, using her free hand grabs the sword she threw earlier that was impaling the corpse beside her and swings the sword with the momentum of her spin, decapitating the last two goblins.

The fight ended in a split second, though it was much longer than the previous bout, allowing me to see a dance attained through the balance between speed and precision. I couldn't help but clap my hands.

"That was truly amazing, it's sure is reassuring to have someone like you in my party Faris."

"...Thank you master."

She is so cute and humble, blushing at my heartfelt compliment, setting a charming contrast to her swift and decisiveness in battle.

Continuing on for my turn, I encounter a small squad of three goblins, walking aimlessly together through the forest, likely looking for their next meal. I have to do better this time.

I aim my new spell, water stream on a path that will hit all three of them and without looking at the result of my spell, I start casting an ice prison towards the goblin furthest to my left. My water stream freezes the edges of the current of water I create, guiding the water straight towards their feet. Seeing the goblins standing in my water all the way up to their ankles, I turn the current into ice, freezing the three panicking goblins.

Seeing my giant waterball slowly travel to the leftmost target, I sprint towards the rightmost goblin and pierces him while he is still panicking. At the same time, the leftmost goblin get's enveloped by the giant waterball of my ice prison, before living up to its name, trapping his whole body in a ball of ice.

The last goblin witnesses the fate of his peers and stop trying to break free his feet to bring his focus on me. Not wanting to give him his desired spear fight, I send a current of electricity through the ice trapping him. The electricity was a lot weaker as ice isn't as good of a conductor as water but manages to make him lose control of his movement, allowing me to feed him the tip of my spear.

"Wow, that was such a cool fight master, it's amazing being able to cast and fight at the same time!"

Yep, I tried my best, though I'm not very strong in a straight-up fight yet, I do have a few flashy tricks up my sleeve. Having triumphed this time, I personally harvest my reward from the dead goblins.

"Master do you need a break? You used quite a few spells consecutively."

"Hmm? No, we barely just started, I usually do this for the whole day anyway."

 

"Does master have a very high level in water magic?"

"...Umm no, I'm only level 10, I've only started training recently since I've come from my hometown."

"Then master naturally have a lot of mana then! Master is a genius meant to become a great mage."

I never really got to see any other mages in action for long. Did I really just happen to be born with immense mana? Or is this one of the perks I got like identify? Well, no point in thinking about what I can't prove right now, better watch Faris in action instead.

 

---

 

We had hunted until around noon, Faris having killed over 20 goblins while I only killed about 14. We decided to eat nearby as we had cleared most of the monsters around anyway so I started a little campfire to roast some of the wolf meat. Unlike the failure me, Faris was able to properly handle processing the body of a wolf into presentable wolf steaks.

She cooked the meat on a pan we bought yesterday along with some of the native seasonings and utensils. The smell of the steak reminded me of some rosemary lamb racks, the actual thing was much rougher in texture and more gamey but was still made to be delicious by my personal chef Faris. Wanting to spoil her, I had Faris let me feed her much to her embarrassment.

"Master! I should be the one serving you."

Seeming to have had her fill after a while, our roles were reversed as I enjoyed in bliss.

We will start fighting together after lunch so we are going to discuss how we fight together while we rest from our meal.

"I don't have much experience in fighting in teams so I think the simplest approach right now is to play to our strengths. You will fight in close combat after I disable the enemy, I will continue to support you with ranged spells if the battle drags on."

"Okay master, I understand."

"Let's see how things go and adjust our strategy as we fight more together."

We set out further into the forest and once again come across a big group of five goblins.

"Let's do a surprise attack, how many can you take out before they can react?"

She stares intently at the goblins for a while to see how they are positioned and their equipment, though it's all still only wooden spears on this floor.

"Hmm...I can take out three for sure, maybe four."

"Okay three is enough, I'll take care of the other two. Engage as soon as you see me launch my ice lances, go get in position and let me know when you are ready?"

Faris moves closer to our target under the cover of the greenery, as I start focusing on casting two ice lances simultaneously. It takes me more time and focus so I can't do it in the middle of combat but now is okay. I carefully form the two spells, making me feel reminiscent of the times when I tried playing two characters with separate two controllers at the same time. Finishing my preparation I look at Faris who gives me a nod.

Two ice lances coming right up.

The ice lances flew like arrows and pierces the chest of the two goblins furthest from Faris, while at the same time I see another two goblins get impaled with either a sword and a dagger before I see the blurry figure of Faris rushing her second sword into the throat of the last goblin. She steps to the side in a practiced maneuver as soon as she makes contact, dodging the spray of blood.

Not bad if I say so myself for our first time working together.

We spend the rest of the day working on our teamwork without break, though it's not like we need one as everyone fights ended smoothly even if we didn't rely on surprise attacks. The first floor was just too easy so we probably have to go the deeper levels tomorrow if we want to get any decent practice in.

Our total harvest today is 86 mana crystals, probably could've been more if we put on minds to it but it is still the best harvest I've had yet.

---

I retrieve Blacky as the sky looks it is starting to darken and make my way back to Unatis. Seeing Faris still full of energy we chat while on the road.

"So what does your sense danger do exactly anyway?"

"Umm...I can sense danger that is going to happen to me if I continue my course of action like if I reach out with the intent to open a chest and it was a trap, I would get a warning."

"That sound's super powerful, no one will be able to hurt you at all!"

"It's not that impressive master, though it's helpful in a lot of cases, it only works if I can react to it, even if I sense an arrow heading straight for my back I may not be able to dodge in time if I was caught off guard. I still have to rely on prediction from my other senses."

Seeing my cute Faris being all humble, I can't but help look forward to tonight.

Come on Blacky, let's pick up the pace a little.