Chapter Fifty Seven: A Guardrail…

“Good morning, Roka,” Shalia greeted him with a smile as he walked into the room where their workstations were. “I was hoping to get something from your room, do you mind helping me?” she went on to add. It had taken some practice on her part before she could finally get the words out without her face going completely red. The girl knew perfectly well that she would only find one thing inside that room, and that is her legs in the air and Greg’s thick cock plowing her depths. She, however, didn’t mind. If anything, she seemed to be craving their dalliances with increasing frequency. Greg wasn’t sure if this was the result of the ADDICTIVE title or her natural desire increasing the more she indulged in it. He didn’t mind either way.

Her innocuous-seeming request was a secret code between the two of them for whenever she was in the mood to have her more carnal needs met. On previous days, Greg would have just smiled and led her to his ‘office’. Despite being sorely tempted to do just that today as well, Greg knew that he couldn’t. His break was over, not to mention that he wasn’t on the best of terms with the healer at present. He didn’t want to earn any more of his teacher’s displeasure. And that was to say nothing of his curious anticipation as to what he’d get from the obsidian earthmover’s beast core.

Running his hand down the small of her back and onto her heart-shaped ass, Greg pulled the girl into a steamy kiss even as he groped her ass through the fabric of her dress. By the time their lips pulled apart, Shalia was leaning onto him, her legs having gone weak. “I’m sorry, I can’t today, my lessons with the healer have resumed. We won’t have as much time to… stretch you out as we previously did,” He offered. “You’ll just have to be a good girl and wait for me,” He said. A whine left the girl’s lips, a clear unwillingness in her voice at the prospect of being made to wait a whole day for her needs to be met. “You’ll be a good girl for me, won’t you?” He posed.

Much like his mother had uncovered her kink for innocent-mother, lecherous-son roleplay, Shalia had come to fully sink into the submissive nature Greg drew out in her. Which was why despite the unwilling look in her eyes and the way her lips pouted, she found herself answering. “I… I will, Master,” She acquiesced. The girl must have been really horny if she was willing to use the title. While in the throes of pleasure, there was almost nothing the girl wouldn’t say or acquiesce to in the pursuit of even more pleasure. This, however, was the first time that she had referred to him by that title outside of his ‘office’. Rewarding her with a peck on the lips, Greg turned and walked out of the room moving towards the teleportation room…

Greg couldn’t help the guilt that ate at him as he looked on at the healer’s pallid face. He had walked into the cave expecting to find the healer at one of her workstations as usual. He, however, had been surprised to find her in the Jacuzzi-like pool of water in the leisure side of her cave. Greg’s first thought was that this was the once-in-a-blue-moon instance where the healer would rest and relax as opposed to working on some project. It was only when she stood on shaky legs that Greg realized that there wasn’t much choice in the matter. Even without her saying anything, Greg had immediately made the connection. His teacher had pushed herself beyond what was safe for her and the consequences had come calling.

One might be tempted to argue that this turn of events vindicated Greg’s initial assessment that the obsidian earthmover was too much for her. That he was right not to summon her. Greg, however, knew that the exact opposite was the case. It was precisely because he hadn’t summoned the healer to his aid that she was in this present state. Given the power she had put on display when taking apart the beast, Greg knew that she could have easily killed the beast with barely any effort. All she’d have had to do was paralyze its body before turning its lungs to bone and the thing would have slowly died on its feet.

She, however, had been angry. Greg’s actions hadn’t just risked himself. Her second chance at being whole once again and not just a crippled mage had also been recklessly put on the line. Had things gone badly, the healer too would have suffered for it. She hadn’t been trying to just kill the beast, she had been trying to make a point. Trying to get him to understand that as broken as she was, she was still formidable enough to be relied on. She may have gone overboard as a result of her anger, but the fact remained, it was his fault.

“Stop!” Despite her weakened state, the healer’s voice carried the same unquestionable authority that it always had. Enough so, that Greg, who’d been crossing the cave to help her lest she fall over, stopped even without meaning to. Nodding toward the sigil they’d been using for the past few months, she commanded. “Sit, I’ll be with you shortly.” Her words were concise, her tone leaving no room for argument.

Greg was tempted to disobey her and still try to help. In the end, however, he turned around and walked toward the sigil. Greg’s jaws clenched, his guilt increasing when he noted all the new sigils that had been drawn around the first sigil he’d been using all this time. He’d been in this cave so many times that he knew it like the back of his hand. These sigils hadn’t been here the day before. She must have worked on them the day before after his last session with her. Even in her state, she had made good on her promise to make some soul-reinforcing sigils for him. She might be unhappy with him but still, she worked to help him at every turn. It only made him feel worse about pushing her into her current state.

Greg sat down, his gaze moving back to the healer just as she pulled a robe tight around herself. It spoke to how shaken up he’d been by the state of his teacher that Greg hadn’t even registered the fact that she’d been standing naked before him. Not that it would have mattered either way. Sex was the last thing he’d think about in the present situation. To keep from staring at her Greg turned his attention to the new sigils around the central sigil that he was seated on. The healer didn’t strike him as a self-conscious person, but no one would like to have someone gawking at them in their vulnerable moments.

‘Hey, Olivia,’ Greg called out to her mentally. ‘Can’t we make use of these sigils to help ease the burden of my dungeon dives?’ he asked.

‘Sure, we could,’ His familiar responded. ‘But it would be like the difference between running and riding on the back of a beast. You might have it easier in the latter, but there’ll be no improvement to your body as a result. Running may be slower and more taxing on your body, but as a result, you hone your body and become fitter as a result. The sigils will bear much of the burden of the dive for you, but in exchange, there’ll be next to no improvement in your soul strength and resilience,’ She answered him, causing most of his interest in the new sigils to vanish. While the toll the dungeon runs took on him wasn’t at all pleasant, Greg was almost certain that the strain it put him through was the reason his soul was strong enough to take on the tier-three core. 

‘Besides,’ his familiar continued. ‘If I’m correctly understanding the formation these sigils come together to make, then it’s supposed to distribute the burden of the strain of your soul among those within the formation. Your teacher will be using her more powerful soul to back you up and enable you to take on whatever you’ll find inside that core. So even if we used it, you’d need someone else to share the burden of the dungeon dives with you,’ She informed him. ‘You and I are already linked at the soul level, if we used this formation, all the strain would just flow back to you,’ She added.

The last of Greg’s interest in the formation went up in smoke even as the healer sat cross-legged before him. The robe she had on seemed to flow around her like water allowing her free motion without exposing anything that she didn’t want seen. “Let’s begin,” She prompted reaching forward and placing her hand on the sigil. Given the fact that she’d already pushed herself past her limits the previous day, Greg was worried that the process would only exacerbate her situation. She, however, didn’t seem any worse for wear even after the mana began to flow. “I strained my mana pathways by using more mana than they can handle in a short span of time. So long as I don’t repeat that mistake, I should be okay within a week or so,” She spoke, then looked up at him. “So you can stop looking at me like I’ll fall over in the next second,” She said calmly. Despite the bluntness of her words, Greg could tell that she was giving an honest assessment of her situation and not just putting on a brave face.

“I owe you an apology,” Greg spoke up. The healer whose gaze had dropped back down to the sigil, didn’t look up. Still, she didn’t stop him so Greg forged ahead. “You and I had an agreement and I failed to honor it. I went ahead and put myself in danger without considering that it’s not just my future that I’m putting in jeopardy by my recklessness. And for that, I can’t tell you just how deeply sorry I am,” Greg offered with a bow of the head.

To some, the apology may have come off as mechanical, formulaic, and not as heartfelt as they might have liked an apology to be. But while Greg might not claim to know his teacher through and through, he had learned a few things about the woman in the time that they’d been together. Part of it was that while she wasn’t a psychopath, his teacher wasn’t that moved by emotional displays. Whenever Greg did something wrong, she didn’t want a mushy explanation or apology from him. She by far preferred that Greg point out what he did wrong, why it was wrong, and promise never to do it again. Even if Greg did it all in a flat tone of voice, so long as Greg meant it, then it would suffice as an apology in her books. But while she didn’t care about emotional displays, Greg had taken to offering a brief bow in apology whenever he did something wrong. How long he bowed was proportional to the magnitude of his mistake.

There was a long silence between them and Greg quietly held the position until the healer finally let out a sigh. “Lift your head,” She said. Greg wasn’t sure if he was imagining it, but her voice sounded a bit warmer compared to what it had been just a few seconds before. With one hand on the floor pumping mana into the sigil, the healer’s other hand extended toward him. Greg forgot to breathe as what was probably the most powerful item he’d come across since coming into this world materialized in the healer’s extended hand. Ironically, Greg recognized what it was even before the healer began to explain it to him. The only thing is, the version that he was familiar with didn’t produce anything even close to the powerful emanations of power that he felt coming from the one in his teacher’s hands.

“This is a mana contract,” She informed him. “Once signed, both parties will be held to what is written on it, and if broken, there will be severe magical consequences enforced by the contract itself. If you are interested in the mechanics behind it, you can ask me another time, I won’t go into it right now. Suffice to say, breaking such a contract would be a very bad idea, if not lethal for those involved,” She laid out. “Read it, and then sign your name at the bottom.

“H… how is it so powerful? He found himself asking even as he picked the piece of paper from the healer with trembling hands.

“Well, it has to be if it’s going to place any kind of restrictions on a seventh-tier mage,” The healer answered, her attention moving back to the sigil to ensure she didn’t go over the right amount. The simple answer, however, caused a bulb to go on in Greg’s head. The mana contracts he encountered inside the dungeon were meant to restrict mundane humans. Simple tier-one mana contracts would have been enough for that purpose, That was probably why they hadn’t made that much of an impression on him. But then, Greg couldn’t keep the hand holding the mana contract from shaking a bit as he wondered, just how powerful would a contract have to be to restrict a seventh-tier mage.

‘That’s a tier-seven contract,’ Olivia confirmed his suspicions through their mind link. ‘Everything you’ve ever bought from the Magic and Eros shop put together, wouldn’t even come to a tenth of the worth of that single piece of paper! At the height of her power, this contract would be seriously debilitating if she ever broke it. In her current state, it would just outright kill her' she informed him. ‘Whatever is on there, she seems to be pretty serious about it. Proceed carefully,’ Olivia advised. Even without her saying so, there was no way Greg would have taken it lightly. Knitting his brow, Greg set about reading the document.

ALENA HEISEN THURSIUS SHALL NOT THROUGH FORCE, MANIPULATION, COERCION, COMPULSION, MIND CONTROL OR ANY OTHER MEANS THAT WOULD COMPROMISE HIS EXERCISE OF FREE WILL, TAKE ANY ITEM, MAGICAL OR OTHERWISE, FROM THE ROKA THAT SIGNS THIS MANA CONTRACT.

ALENA HEISEN THURSIUS MAY REQUEST ITEMS FROM THE ROKA THAT SIGNS THIS MANA CONTRACT, MAGICAL OR OTHERWISE, ONLY IF SHE HAS AN ITEM OR ITEMS OF COMPARABLE VALUE TO OFFER IN EXCHANGE. FOLLOWING THIS, ALENA HEISEN THURSIUS SHALL ONLY TAKE ANY ITEM REQUESTED FROM THE ROKA THAT SIGNS THIS MANA CONTRACT AFTER GIVING THE ITEM OR ITEMS OF COMPARABLE VALUE OVER TO THE ROKA THAT SIGNS THIS MANA CONTRACT.

With only two clauses to the document, it wasn’t that long. Still, Greg read the thing three times over, each time, his frown deepening. It wasn’t the way he was referred to in the contract that confused him. Greg knew from his experience inside the dungeons that Mana contracts had to be very specific about its targets. If the healer didn’t go through the pains of being particular about which Roka she was referring to in the contract, then the contract would extend to any Roka that she encountered even if it wasn’t Greg in particular.

Greg’s confusion about the contract stemmed from a number of factors. One, the healer had never done any of the things quoted in the first clause, or even shown any inclination to. Secondly, Greg believed, or at least hoped, that their relationship was at a point where they could simply ask each other for anything without it being transactional in the way that this contract would make it. Looking at the bottom of the page, Greg could easily recognize his teacher’s flowing script where she had already signed her name. All that remained was for Greg to put his name below hers and the mana contract would go into effect. Raising his head to regard his teacher, who had finally lifted her hand from the sigil and was regarding him, he only uttered one word. “Why?” he asked.

The healer regarded him for a second before replying. “Because I’ve worked out your secret Roka,” She said, causing Greg’s eyes to go wide before he even had the presence of mind to control such an obvious giveaway. “I’m sure I don’t have the full picture yet,” His teacher went on, ignoring his reaction. “But through tidbits here and there, I think I’ve worked it out. We are in a town on a mountain in the middle of nowhere, and yet you seem to be able to procure items that you have no business having. That was the first clue. The second clue was your familiar’s aura, I don’t think I’d be overstating it by saying that she seemed to exude lust the same way a flame emits heat. In other words, she is a creature of lust, and I suspect that she doesn’t just exude it, she feeds on it too,” She proposed.

“This is the second piece of the puzzle which brings me to the third and final piece of the puzzle, your decision to fuck every woman you can get your hands on in the town. Taken on its own, it would be easy to dismiss it as the passion of youth. You are young and hot-blooded, seeking to indulge your desires in whatever way you can. However, when one considers the previous point, then a completely different picture forms. You aren’t just indulging your desires for the sake of it, you are doing it because your familiar gains something from it. But then, why would you go through all the trouble for her? You two are close, but it would be a little too one-sided for you to go through all the trouble and take on the risk of pursuing all the women in town without gaining anything from it, wouldn’t you say? That is unless one considers the very first clue. The seemingly unexplainable items that you seem to own without any logical explanation for them. This arrangement between the two of you isn’t one-sided at all. Instead, it’s an equal exchange. She feeds off the lust you generate, and in exchange, you get a whole slew of magical items for your troubles” The healer meticulously laid out her reasoning.

Greg was stunned and left unsure how to feel. On the one hand, he could feel his respect for the healer go up several notches. Using a few scraps of knowledge, she had basically worked out part of the system. Sure, she didn’t know about the magic and Eros shop, or that they ran on different currencies, but it would be impossible to figure that out based on the meager information available to her. She also thought that it was a direct exchange with his familiar and while not true, it also wasn’t entirely wrong. Olivia’s original is the one that designed his system, in essence, all exchanges through the system were with her.

On the other hand, he couldn’t help the dread that filled him as he wondered if other less noble parties would be able to figure out at least part of his secret through small clues in the same way that the healer had. Greg counted himself lucky beyond words that the healer was an honorable individual. As she had demonstrated the day before, she was more than powerful enough to make him do whatever she wanted. After a single day of torture by her, Greg doubted he’d be able to say no to anything she asked, and yet she hadn’t chosen to use her power in that way. His familiar, however, once warned him that only a fool thinks that everyone else is a fool. If his teacher had been able to work this out, then probably there were others out there who could do the same. All it would take was for one person to figure it out and then spread it around for Greg to be a marked man! He’d have to be ten times more careful with his secret going forward than he’d already been.

Greg held out the contract back to his teacher. “If you’re willing to go this far, then I already trust you,” he said.

The healer, however, made no motion to take the contract from him. “You think too nobly of me,” She instead said. “Do not make the mistake of thinking that a smiling face can’t drive a dagger through your heart. Do not think that just because I am able to restrain my greed now, I will always be able to, Roka. You only saw a fraction of what I am capable of yesterday. And that’s just in the area of causing immediate pain. If I wanted to, I could make you into a thrall. I could get you to where you only feel good when doing what I ask you to. That your only purpose and obsession in life will be to do what I want you to. We have a good relationship, Roka, and I can understand your inclination to think well of me. But I am no saint, if nothing else, you should have at least learned that from what transpired yesterday. That contract isn’t just to reassure you. It’s also a means for me to guard against myself. A guardrail to keep my greed in check. Else, if tomorrow comes and I want something badly enough, I cannot promise that I’ll not give in to the temptation to take it whether you want to give it to me or not.”

The words were delivered in a neutral tone. Greg could tell that the healer wasn’t trying to scare him. She wasn’t even trying to paint a worse picture of herself than was true. Instead, she was trying to be as honest with him as she could possibly be. In a way, she was reminding him not to be naïve. Just because someone was being nice to you today, didn’t mean they couldn’t turn nasty tomorrow. Just because they were friend today didn’t mean they couldn’t be foe tomorrow. Rather than leaving it up to chance and hoping that she would be a good person, the healer was ensuring that she’d have a powerful incentive to make the right decision if she was ever faced with the temptation.

Unable to mount any argument against her, Greg took back the contract and asked. “What shall I sign it with?”

A golden feather quill materialized in the healer’s hand, which she held out to him. “It’ll draw on your mana and add it to the contract marking you specifically as the other party in the contract,” She explained. Without further ado, Greg took the quill from her hand and signed his name at the bottom of the page. The quill did draw in his mana but the amount was small enough that Greg barely even felt it. It would seem that the contract only needed enough mana to recognize him and no more. Once it was done, he handed both the contract and quill back to the healer.

His teacher took the contract from him and stared at it for a long while. Greg got the sense that she was fighting with herself over something and part of him couldn’t help but wonder if she already regretted the contract. Her next words, however, proved that the contract wasn’t what she was conflicted about. “Now that that’s out of the way, I owe you an apology,” she said. The words were so unexpected that all Greg could do was stare dumbly at her. Once again, the healer went quiet and Greg could tell that she was thinking through her next words.

“Ever since I was betrayed, I’ve been living in hiding, unable to trust anyone, unable to reveal who I am or what happened to me. Consumed by my single-minded obsession with revenge, I didn’t think I needed others anyway. That is, until you came along. Finally, here was someone who saw me, the true me without any embellishments. You knew that I was broken with barely a tenth of the power I once had and yet, the regard and respect you had for me never went down even a little. Whether it’s just ego, or something deeper within me that craved that, I don’t know. I just know that it meant a lot to me.”

“When I found Niya and he told me all that had happened, the first thing I did was check the other half of the summoning token I gave you. Perhaps, I thought, in my haste to get to Niya, I missed your distress signal. I knew that this wasn’t the case seeing as the token is enchanted to draw my attention the moment it’s activated, no matter what I’m doing at the time. If that hadn’t happened, it’s because you hadn’t called on me,” the healer paused for a bit before continuing. “Looking back at it now, It’s easy to understand why you wouldn’t,” She said holding up the signed contract. “You have an epic secret that you were completely right to try and hide. Far lesser things have gotten mages far more powerful than you killed,” She stated.

“That, however, isn’t what I thought at the time. Like I said yesterday, I thought you looked down on me. I thought you saw me as little more than a cripple unable to save you,” She confessed. A bitter smile crossed her lips as she continued. “I went into a spiral of my own making. I found myself thinking that all this time you had been secretly looking down on me. That you never truly respected me, you were just pretending to so I could teach you magic,” Greg immediately opened his mouth to object in the strongest possible terms that he could. The healer, however, held up a hand, forestalling his response.

“I know,” She said simply. “Looking back now, it was probably the part of me that had been betrayed whispering in the ear of the part of me that craved the acceptance and respect I got from you. Some small part of me knew I was being irrational, but, I guess one who has been bitten by a snake before will jump if a rope brushes against their leg. I allowed the insecure part of me to take control and made you watch me as I tortured an animal to death just to prove I was powerful,” She said with a smile of self-mockery.

“You’d think that with almost eight hundred cycles of life, I’d be wiser than that,” She continued with the same self-mockery. “But you know what? I’ve often found sixty, seventy, eighty cycles old mundane humans to be wiser than mages ten times their age. Macabre as it may be, my theory is that the knowledge that they might soon die allows them to more easily let go of their ego and look back at their lives and the mistakes they’ve made with more detachment. The specter of death allows them to be more honest with themselves and others about their faults and shortcomings. However, tell a person that they have thousands of cycles to live, and even at five hundred cycles of age, you’ll be lucky to find one who is as wise as that age may imply. Sure, we have a greater range of experiences to draw from. At the same time, however, we’ve also had far longer to get dug in and stuck in our ways. Few truly stupid people manage to live that long, so don’t ever underestimate mages that old. However, you will quickly find that cunning and wisdom are two different things. Out of a hundred, ninety-nine are usually cunning, and only one wise,” She relayed.

There was a slight pause before she smiled weakly. “Forgive my circuitous rambling. In the end, I’m just trying to say sorry. While my admonition remains that you should always call to me whenever you are in danger, it doesn’t justify my actions. Making you watch as I tortured the obsidian earthmover was a step too far and for that I am sorry,” She said, this time, offering him a slight bow.

“For what it’s worth, your actions were warranted!” Greg said after a slight pause. “You were right, while part of the reason I didn’t call on you was because I believed I could handle the beast, there was also a part of me that was worried that in your injured state, the beast would prove to be too much for you,” He confessed. “What I can promise you, however, is that at no point ever since I met you, Alena, have I looked down on you. You’ve always had my respect not only because of how powerful you are but because of who you are as a person. Rather than looking down on you, it’d be more accurate to say that I underestimated you. All this time, I knew that you were a seventh-tier mage, I just never truly understood what that meant. What you did yesterday, while unpleasant, also brought into clear focus the true depth of your power. So, don’t beat yourself too much over it. What you did had to be done,” He said with a smile at the healer.

Greg could tell that his words did indeed make her feel a bit better. With a nod, the contract and the quill disappeared from her hand, probably sent into her storage item, whatever it was. Her expression became serious as she spoke. “With the infusion of mana done, we can now move on to…” The healer paused mid-sentence her gaze dropping to Greg’s hand as he held out a vial to her.

Noting the objection in her expression that she was about to voice, Greg spoke before she could. “The contract says you can’t overtly or covertly take anything from me by force or manipulation. It also forbids you from requesting anything from me without offering something of comparable value in exchange. It, however, says nothing about me freely choosing to give something to you,” he declared. “So, take it,” He urged, once again offering the weeping flower tincture to the healer…

***