Oh, sorry, just a moment… there!

Don’t my nails look pretty~?  I’ll let them dry during storytime, and --

-- eh?

R-really?

I was certain you’d be out of stamina for it by now, um… let’s see… both my feet and my hands need to be left to dry…

…

…Ah!  You can fuck my cleavage?

Oh don’t worry about it~  Not only is my lovely skin capable of cleaning itself of cum, I can absolutely cum from my tits if you fuck them hard enough.

Let’s just see -- we need to get positioned properly… like… sooooo…

…Mmph~  Okay, go ahead! 

---

Haaaa… haaaaaaa~

Okay.  Okay.  Ah.

Your stamina is -- getting impressive.

I’m going to need to start using some of my own abilities to keep up at this rate…

…Hm?  What’s that shocked look for?  I’m the one that should be looking shocked!  You didn't even need a full year before you made me start taking you seriously when we fuck!  

Honestly… going to give me a complex, tch… 

I work hard at being a slut, you know?!  You don’t get to be frustrated when you fail to overcome a true master in under a year!

Hrmf.  

Let’s move on to storytime.  We can talk more about sex skills later if you really want to. 

---

So.  With Shimizu getting… increasingly difficult to resist, and with our explorations of the fifth landmass going apace, things were going well.  

We had managed to identify the probable locations of two more problem hexes -- the School of Submission and the First Tentacle Beast -- and were were methodically narrowing down the precise locations.  The fact that you can't see into adjacent hexes was a big time waster, but it wasn't dangerous, just a delay.  

In the process of doing so, we were also pinning down how the hexes moved.  There were only two or three possible patterns left at that point.  And if we figured out which precise pattern it was, then we'd be able to pinpoint the past, current, and future location of any and every hex we had a record of.

Frustratingly, we could only manually check a select few pieces of the fifth landmass every day.  Given how hexes beyond neighboring ones were always hidden behind an impenetrable fog, and how we didn’t have the forces to manage it -- eh?

Ah… yeah, okay, technically, you have a point.  The Evil God of Chastity and Purity was the biggest, most critical threat.  But it was also a predictable one, and the two kings had an avalanche of problems to solve that required their army.  Said avalanche mainly consisted of reality bugs, but still.

They were slowly sending us more people, and there were plans to send us as many as they could when it closer to when it would rise up, but at the time we didn’t need any more people.  …I just wanted more, because exploring the landmass was taking forever!

Anyway, with the select few pieces we could examine, and given how they would change location every day, we had a series of possible ‘current maps’ for the fifth landmass that covered every hex we explored.

Each map assumed a particular pattern of movement from the hexes, and every time a map was proved wrong, we got closer and closer to the point where we could stop planting numbered flags and markers on the hexes.  

The fifth landmass is such a pain…

I was mostly letting the others deal with it; Jessica, Takeo, Zaylee, and Yuki were all leading scout teams, and doing a good job of it.  Sumiko was actually getting out of her laboratory sometimes during the fifth year, going to various hexes to do mad science experiments and -- secretly -- shardcraft scans of various oddities.  And Shimizu was being the Kingdom's on-call reality bug killer as her day job cover for her real job, which was, of course, schmoozing with Futaba.   I was feeling a bit lost at the time, but -- well, it -- how to explain…

It wasn't because I wasn’t doing anything useful.  I was doing things that were useful.  A lot of things that were useful!  A lot of alchemy, a lot of talking with our various allies, discussing the state of divine politics with Modesty, writing guidebooks for the scout teams on the various fifth landmass hexes and monsters… I was pulling my weight.  It was just…

…I had free time, and I didn’t know what to do with it!

I had, in the over four years since I came to that reality, somehow lost my capacity to deal with free time.

It was terrible! 

---

I did end up finding a compromise.

Well, I say ‘compromise’, I more mean ‘something I could do in my spare time’.

It was perfect for me!  It was something I viscerally enjoyed, and yet hadn’t had much time to get more skilled in --

-- uh.

…

F… fuck.

Yes.

Yes, it was sex.

Shut up, okay?!  Good sex is hard!

Oh don’t get me wrong.  The human body is designed -- for most people -- to find sex to be something that is addicting in its pleasure.  That’s great and all, but just ask any couple who were virgins before fucking each other about their first time.

Or -- actually, probably, most new couples in general.

Sex is a skill.

At the start?  Before you have any practice?  Sex is only ‘okay’ at best.

I refused to let that be enough for me!

Oh sure, I could have used any number of my abilities to shortcut the process.  Pheromones, my cunt tail, my augmented or parasitized slits -- all of that helped a lot.

But it wasn't the same thing as having ‘immense skill’ in an area.

I had a high degree of apparent skill, but it wasn’t due to any actual understanding on my part; it was my raw inborn prodigy, modified succubus's body, and divine blessings that were letting me coast.

I quickly found during my free time that gaining actual skills in sex was a fascinating process!  

Even better, do you know how many papers were done on sex and pleasure?!  There was a literal library full of works done purely on sexual experiences and related phenomena, and it only covered maybe half of the material that the world at large had to offer!

…Of course, that’s just the theoretical knowledge.  Which can help!  But when learning the actual skill, it’s, hm.  Ah!  It was a lot like learning how to be sociable, frankly, just with much shorter testing times.

Mmm, that’s not that clear, is it… let me put it this way.

Everybody is different.  …Obviously.  Don’t give me that look, I’m going somewhere with this!

So.  Everybody is different.  They enjoy different things when it comes to conversation.  For example, some might respond well to confidence.  Others prefer kindness.  Some like jokes, while others don’t feel comfortable if you aren’t swearing with every third word.

Even if there are commonalities, things like how everybody likes it if you pay attention to them and what they’ve said in the past, the nuances are critical.

The same is true of sex.

Everybody has the same ‘fun buttons’.  You know the set; cock, clit, prostrate, nipples.  But how they’re treated varies per person.  …To an extent.

I know I like it rough, but if you treat most girls' tits like they’re made of dough that needs to be kneaded, you’ll end up with them slamming their knee into your crotch instead of a mewling slut.

Interestingly, the key that I’ve found to ensure that sex is always absolutely amazing is --

…

I’m completely off topic, aren’t I?

Sorry, sorry, I just get so wrapped up in this, you know?  It’s so fascinating!  I have entire notebooks full of scribbled thoughts and tests I’ve done with various people!  Did you know that --

-- ack!  No, no, back to storytime!

No more distractions!  Storytime, go!  

---

We had reached the third month of the final year when something unexpected happened.

This is going back aways -- but remember how Modesty’s crusade was to find the shards of an Axiomanager that decided to stay in MISSY?  She only managed to find one of the three, meaning that the other two were still out there -- somewhere.

That’s all we had on them.  They were ‘somewhere’.  Well, one of the three was ‘somewhere’, at least.

Anyway, at the end of month three?  Some plucky young scouts in Modesty's crusade found one of the remaining two missing shards. 

It was in an underground ruined city made of -- not quite Atlantean Alloy?  The city was like a prototype Atlantis, with a prototype alloy.  It made divine detection 'fuzzy', but when the scouts poked the divine shard, the world shard still got a ping registering its existence and rough location.  

Modesty ordered her crusade army to rush to where it was, but when they arrived, they ran into something unpleasant.

Argenta had raised her own army from her City of Alchemists and had gotten there first.  

The alchemical army was a mixture of a small number of alchemists as the officers, and massive numbers of war-beasts that she'd invented using monster-making shardcraft Raleine had taught her.  And Argenta had also done -- something to be able to make portals, a magic which is supposed to be impossible in MISSY, to march her alchemical army into the region, conquer it, and start ripping up the cobblestones looking for the shard.

When Modesty accused her of hypocrisy, apparently Argenta just laughed in her face and asked how many people in her crusade army she was willing to order to their deaths against her 'better, cleaner' war-beast army.  

The battle went on for a week straight, on the surface and underground.  The crusade army trying to push out the alchemical army.  The scouts wound up just hiding down the deepest hole they could find, waiting for a chance to make a break for it.  Both sides were evenly matched, with Argenta and Modesty countering everything the other tried to do, leaving the armies to fight it out and decide who got the shard.

…Or that was how it was going, until Roberta snuck in during the chaos, managed to track down the scouts, and grabbed the shard from them.  

Argenta was, ah…

…’Very upset’ is putting it lightly, from what I was told.

Modesty was pretty frigid about it too, the next time I met her.  She just politely said she didn't want to talk about it, asked me to ask one of the other goddesses hanging around the Kingdom for the details, and changed the subject.  

Roberta getting the shard… wasn’t a good thing.  What with it meaning the chief god now had another vote for him staying chief god, and made the math a lot worse.  

I was discussing it with everybody, and ended up asking them if they had any ideas about what to do.  It was pretty desperate, given the last missing shard could have ended up basically anywhere.  The gods had no idea, the kings had no idea, I had no idea… but it was worth a shot, right?

…yeah.

I should really stop underestimating Takeo.

…Don’t tell him I said that.

Apparently, there is -- okay, so, taking a step back.

In Alchemical Corruption Twelve, there’s an old pervert that wants to build a private onsen-like building so that he can peek on hot girls that use it.

…Which is very much not okay, to be clear, but the thought of getting onto how that invasion of privacy during a moment of vulnerability is very bad just -- exhausts me right now.

So I’m going to move on.

This time.

Now, what I didn’t know, is that, apparently, that old man is a monster in a fight.  

I knew he was tough -- you need to fight him to gain a few key skills -- but not strong enough to make even Takeo stumble against him.  

Not 'game Takeo'.  Time looping cheatyface Takeo.  

It -- didn’t really make any sense.

You don’t get that strong by random chance.  Not unless you’re Kaiser, and he’s functionally unique.  In order to get that strong as a normal human, you need to form connections, allies.  Get rare potions and unusual opportunities.  Chug Potential-Freeing Elixirs like water.

An old man that is out in the middle of nowhere has none of that.

And asking the Kings to find out if somebody like that had vanished in the past two decades came up empty.

…I mean, not empty empty, but nobody that fit what we were looking for.  Somebody that was seeking strength, in the right age range, that purchased Potential Freeing Elixirs… we were looking for those and other, similar qualifications, but the Back King had nobody on file that fit.  

So the question then becomes:  How did he gain his strength?

Oh there were possibilities, to be sure.  Maybe he just was simply that insane a prodigy.  Maybe he was somebody on file that had shapeshifted, faked their death, or otherwise changed from what their file said.  Maybe he had managed to craft everything he needed to grow in power all on his own, without anybody noticing.

Suffice to say, none of those options were particularly likely.

What was likely?

Was that he had found a shard and, being utterly clueless about its true nature and power, had been using it to strengthen himself without actually absorbing it.  

Shards are intuitive to use, yes, but if you don’t know anything about them -- it’s this weird, glowing light that seems to want to integrate with your body and displace your soul.

Going ‘wha - NO’ to that is, I think, a very reasonable flinch reaction.

Anyway.  Takeo, after remembering the old pervert and some brainstorming, thought up a probable chain of events.

Somebody touches the shard and manages to jerk it out of their body before it starts sticking around -- but in the process, also gains some kind of minor ‘wish’.  Perhaps an illness is healed, or they become younger, or whatever.

Then they touch the shard again, force it out of their body again, gain another minor wish, and then decide that they are very clever and have deduced the 'proper' way to use the shard.  

Given that every time they touch it they can tell it wants to replace their soul -- because it does, and would if they let it -- they don’t let it stay in their body.  Instead, they go to it, possibly occasionally and possibly frequently, to get a series of ‘minor wishes’ granted to them.

They are just smart enough to know that they shouldn’t summon money without a way to avoid detection, but not smart enough to know that -- uh --

-- basically what they’re doing sounds like a recipe for disaster and they should bury that weird sparkling light and run away really fast?

I mean, if you know what it does, you’re a moron for not taking it into yourself.

If you don’t then it sounds kinda evil.

It was the first really plausible explanation we had for the old pervert, so we decided to investigate this onsen enthusiast in our spare time.

Just in case. 

---

I would like to state clearly before I continue:

The possibility of finding a shard -- of it even being there, and of us gaining it if it was -- was miniscule.

Like.  Stupidly tiny.

The three shards scattered into truly random locations across all of MISSY.  The only thing we could be confident about it was they would have spawned on solid, dry ground.

…Maybe in a lake or something, but not in the ocean.

The ocean in MISSY isn’t exactly -- entirely -- real.  Same with, uh.  The sky, if you go up high enough.

Seriously, that reality is a mess…

But even with it being ‘not in the ocean’ and ‘somewhere on the ground’, the chances of finding one was tiny.  Absolutely tiny!  Nearly impossible, because they could have appeared anywhere!  It was a miracle that none of the three showed up in an area that was highly inhabited by humans, because if they were they would have been found by then.

It had been generations and nobody had found them until Modesty literally gathered all the manpower she could on the continent to scour everything to find them.  And she found one.

Argenta and Roberta had found another, by sheer accident.

And we were going, ‘hey, this old guy is suspicious, let’s see if he has the super-rare super-shiny thing that he could use to turn himself into a god if he was willing to risk it!’

Yeah, uh.

Suffice to say, I wasn’t exactly confident it was there.  I was going along with it just in case, but the odds of it actually being there?

Ludicrous.

Which makes me kinda pissed off that it actually was.

I mean seriously, what the fuck?!