“Wow! This place is amazing!” The young beastkin woman exclaimed with wonder.
Nearly twenty first year students had filed into the main hall of Rick’s shared home, each of them mirroring the same sentiments as the girl who spoke up. Apparently the little study session Sade had been roped into had grown considerably once her tutelage had proven incredibly effective in raising the overall grades for those who participated. This became a problem when the amount of students became too much for the library where the sessions were being held to simply ignore any longer.
“I’m glad you like it. Now, follow me and I’ll take you to the dining room so we can have some snacks while we wait for things to start.” Rick said while gesturing to the proper door.
He led the gaggle of excited scholars through the double doors and towards the large dining tables where they saw that Tyr had just set down the last tray of snacks. When the group got close, the elf stood to her full height and arched her back in a long stretch. The excitable coyote girl at the front of the pack stopped dead in her tracks when she beheld the amazon before her.
“Hello there.” The elf said, giving the girl a fanged grin. “Ya can call me Tyr.” She held out her hand for the beastkin to shake.
The young woman gulped audibly before taking Tyr’s meaty palm in hers. “H-H-Hattepaa. N-nice to m-meet you. Y-you’re a lot b-b-bigger than I e-expected.”
Rick decided to help the poor girl out a bit. She was stammering so hard from nervousness that he was honestly impressed she was able to talk at all. He leaned down and whispered loudly beside her ear. “Don’t worry so much. Tyrillian may look all scary and intimidating, but I’ve yet to meet another woman who is as much of a blushing maiden as she is.”
“R-Rick! Don’t say things like that!” Tyr said while unintentionally proving his point exactly. Her cheeks all the way to the tips of her pointed ears were doing their best to match the color of her beautiful mane. Hattepaa giggled at the sight as well as a few others who overheard Rick’s declaration.
“That being said,” Rick continued, no longer whispering so that the crowd could hear him clearly. “I’ve also seen her rip a monster in half with her bare hands. So I guess it all evens out.”
The entire room went silent as his words sunk in. He wasn’t exaggerating in the least either. The bisection in question was such an impressive kill that they hung up both halves of the bug monster’s body alongside their leader’s skull in the trophy room once the hunter garrison was done examining the corpses for clues on what they were. The hunters still had no idea, but they did learn that the bugs were indeed the same species as the thing that attacked Rick, Tyr, and Sade on the old road. So that was something at least.
Tyr shot him an annoyed glare. “Open up with that first next time. Don’t want people ta think I’m weak.”
Rick snorted. “Anyone who takes one look at you and calls you weak is simply blind.” He clapped his hands together. “Alright everyone, find a seat and get ready to learn.”
“Where is our dear girl anyways?” A spooky looking woman asked while everyone found a chair.
“We had a long and hard day earlier so she had to take some time to get cleaned up.” Rick answered simply.
“Oh I’m sure she had to deal with something long and hard all right.” The woman snickered.
“Tess! Behave yourself!” Hattepaa hissed.
Tess simply shot Rick a knowing smirk and sat down without any further innuendo. He didn’t mind, she wasn’t exactly too far off the mark. All four of them had a bit of fun in the baths before getting the house ready to receive guests. How she could have possibly known that was anyone’s guess, but he assumed she was just the type to make lewd remarks without any basis in fact.
After a few minutes, Lilie slipped in from the back door while wheeling in a mobile chalkboard. Sade still insisted they try to keep their growth spurts a secret as long as possible, so the latent succubus had expended much of her stored energy to slim back down to a more recognizable size so she wouldn’t freak out any guests who knew her personally at Mya. She was undoubtedly still pretty curvy, and she demanded that all three of them would fill her back to capacity together that evening when everything was over in exchange for her cooperation.
A short time later the door opened again and the whole room immediately went quiet when they beheld Sade. Her long legs and curvy hips were squeezed into a black knee length pencil skirt. She wore a long sleeved blouse that struggled to contain her sizable bust. Her hair was pulled back into a single puffy bun on the back. And of course, she wore a novelty pair of glasses that Rick finally made time to acquire for her. The whole ensemble was a tantalizing combination of sexy and serious that fit Sade to a tee.
Tyr adjusted herself in her seat right next to him. “Damn… ya sure know how ta pick an outfit.”
Rick only chuckled in response. He had to be careful in controlling his own ‘standing ovation’ at the sight of his brilliant lover in that sinful skirt. Looking around, he could see that he and the elf weren’t the only ones having issues with their pants suddenly becoming a tad too tight.
“Whoa… you look a lot different outside our uniforms.” Hattepaa whispered.
Rick could tell Sade was doing her best to keep a straight face at the remark. “Yes, well, they are just robes after all.”
“Oh yes, because robes are soooo good at concealing one’s figure.” Another student said, each word absolutely dripping with sarcasm.
Sade fixed the one who spoke with a fierce glare and hiked up her glasses with a long finger, the simple motion nearly caused the beast in Rick’s pants to break containment right then and there. The whole attitude and costume was really, really doing something for him. He heard a soft, keening whine from right next to him and realized that he was not alone in thinking this way.
“I have been undergoing a bit of a growth spurt and utilize devices known as chest wraps to curtail these kinds of pointless discussions while I am busy trying to study magic.” She said pointedly. “Now! Rather than continue commenting on the size of my chest, we can instead focus on the main reason we are all gathered together in the first place. So, who has a question about what was last discussed in professor Armondo’s last lecture?”
Like waking up from a daze, the mood in the room slowly shifted to a more studious and focused attitude. The collective blood gathered back into the upper brains for those in attendance as it were. One of the girls raised her hand and started to go over what she didn’t understand from the very lecture Sade mentioned.
For the next few hours, Rick watched in rapt amazement as the smartest woman he had ever known patiently answered every question her fellow students had about the nature of magic and spellweaving. She used nearly every teaching technique in the book; different metaphors to simplify complex concepts, diagrams on the chalkboard, and more than once she just casted the magic outright so everyone could simply see the spells in action.
While most of what was discussed went right over Rick’s head, he was still able to follow along somewhat mainly due to Sade often repeating many of the same concepts and theories that she used to teach him magic all the way back on their first day in Valmik. The students of Mya were not stupid, and more than once the question they asked was of such a high conceptual level that Rick had absolutely no clue on what they were even talking about.
Just because some of the subject matter was beyond him, didn’t mean that the time spent listening and taking notes was wasted. Rick was from a world of advanced science, not magic. Parva functioned on a fundamentally different channel to Earth, and at the heart of it was mana. He didn’t have the full picture on how everything fit together, but with each question answered by Sade or another student, he could feel another puzzle piece fall into place as his understanding grew.
More than once however, he caught himself not fully listening to the conversation going on and instead focusing on Sade’s face. She was in her element and reveling in it. Her gentle smile had been steadily growing the more she talked with her classmates. Once or twice she came across something that she had no ready answer for, and when she and the others put their heads together to puzzle it out, that’s when her radiant smile shined the brightest. Rick could feel himself falling in love with the brilliant and dedicated woman all over again.
An elbow to his gut jolted him out of his reverie. “Time ta cook.” Tyr whispered with a knowing smirk.
The two of them snuck out of the dining hall and went into the kitchen together. There was at least another hour of the study session to go, so there was plenty of time to whip up something quick for everyone to enjoy before they had to make their way back home. Once the two cleansed their hands, they got straight to work.
While the city of Shatak had next to nothing resembling the ingredients necessary to make a lot of the asian dishes Rick had grown up with, there was still a bright silver lining to the culinary situation he had found himself in. With a grin, he counted the pile of tortillas in front of him. He may not be able to make ramen, but at least he could still enjoy taco’s.
“Hey, Rick,” Tyr said softly from the grill behind him after a minute or two of food prep. “Do ya… do ya think I should work on me magic more?”
Rick couldn’t help but notice something odd about the hulking elf’s tone. She sounded almost lost, unsure. That was the exact opposite of the cheerful and rambunctious ranger he had grown to know and love. He set down what he was working on and turned to her.
“What brought this on?” He asked softly, doing his best to keep his voice calm and even.
The large woman sighed and scratched her cheek. “I just… Seeing what Lilie and Sade can do, how they bring so much ta the group. I just feel like… like a simple brute in comparison.” She said quietly, her voice hitching near the end.
Rick swiftly wrapped his arms around her in a fierce hug. “Not once have I ever considered you ‘a simple brute’.” He said firmly. He then looked up into her mesmerizing emerald eyes. “You are strong and fierce, that is true. But if it wasn’t for you and your guidance, then Sade and I would probably have died many times over by this point. You have given us insights we would never have considered, and your strength has carried us all back to safety more times than I can count. Even if you focused on nothing else besides what you already have, neither I nor anyone else would have any reason to complain about it.”
Rick attempted to stand up on his toes to give his lover a kiss on the chin, but the height difference just made that prospect too difficult. He opted instead to plant his lips in the center of her broad chest, just over her sweet and caring heart.
Tyr wrapped her arms around him in a gentle cocoon of hard muscle. “Thanks.” She whispered softly, the simple word laced with emotion. “I dun know why I’m like this right now. I just…” She coughed to clear her throat. “Thanks, just thanks fer reminding me about all that.”
“Anytime Tyr. I’ll always be here in case you need to talk and clear your head for any reason.” He tapped her side gently. “But do you mind chatting while we work?”
“Oh, sorry!” Tyr apologized and released him from her hold.
“No need for that.” Rick laughed and went back to his station. “So tell me, do you honestly think your fighting style could be improved with magic?”
Tyr tapped her chin in thought. Rick was glad that she seemed mostly recovered from her sudden wave of emotion. Her eyes still glistened with excess moisture, but otherwise the episode had passed just as quickly as it came. “Hrm, I’m not too sure honestly. I got the mana and attunement. So why not try ta use it?”
Rick nodded his head in agreement. “That’s a good point. Honestly, if we got a dedicated mage like Sade doing strength training, we should probably add the more cerebral pursuits on the docket as well. All of us can cast, so why not try to min-max our skills to the limit?”
“Min-max?” Tyr asked.
“Ah, right, sorry. It’s shorthand for ‘minimize weaknesses, maximize strengths’.” He laughed. “Although some people consider it to mean ‘put minimal effort into what you’re bad at, and maximum effort into what you are’ but I prefer the first interpretation.”
Tyr grunted her agreement. “Aye, same. Yer people seem ta be quite wise.”
Rick couldn’t help but let a snort escape from his throat. “Maybe. But spouting off wisdom you randomly read somewhere and actually following through are two separate things. Still… at least there’s the chance that someone doesn’t fall into the same pitfalls our ancestors did since they were smart enough to write it down.”
“Ya don’t sound confident.”
He just sighed at that. “I’m just a cynic. Had to learn a few hard lessons myself since waking up in that forest.”
Rick felt strong arms gently drag him into a warm embrace. “And ya came out stronger for it. We all have.”
“Thank you Tyr.” He said softly, leaning into her body and taking solace in her sturdiness. After he had his fill he gave the elf a smack on her plump rear. “Okay! That’s enough cuddling for the moment. Let’s get this food ready for our ravenous scholars.”
“Ya got it.” Tyr chuckled.
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Tftc.
Thank you for the chapter, the immange work well.
Glad to hear it.