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00115

Nathan shot the demon again, then frowned. He swapped out his magazines and shot again, then frowned again and swapped out magazines.

The current demon, in the final, massive chamber of the temple, was massive compared to the others. Twenty feet in height, and rather thick and ugly in Nathan's opinion. It lacked wings, but had four horns rather than two and a single long, spike-tipped tail which it used repeatedly to attack them.

Keith did his best to defend against its attacks to protect the others while still attacking. The elemental familiars attacked as well, wearing down its Health, and Nathan was swapping magazines in an attempt at finding a bullet which dealt more damage to the monster than the others. Because of that, he also did his best to shoot the same spot each time, just in case changing spots affected damage.

He knew it probably didn't, but he wanted to anyway.

After sixteen different magazines, he found one with bullets that did nearly three times as much damage. He knew the others were probably annoyed he was testing to see if Health could be affected by some sort of weakness, but with how quickly he could move and swap magazines, he didn't care.

What he did care about was the fact that it required his holy bullets. They were the most time-consuming ones to create, and required using either water from the heavenly storm elemental or blood or cum of a demigod, though he knew there was the possibility of milk, too.

"Tell Splashy," Nathan told Breezy. "That holy attacks does more damage to the beast."

Even if his familiar didn't respond, continuing its attacks, the demigod knew his message was transmitted. That was evident only a couple of seconds later, when the psychic's Staff of Holy Light appeared in his hands.

The pair of enchanters began attacking the demonic boss with their holy-based attacks, and the demon's Health began dropping at a much more frequent rate than before. It took them less time to kill it after then than it had taken them to reach that point, Nathan riddling its body and head with bullets as Keith severed its head with a lightning-infused razor-wind whip.

They finished, and Keith inspected his staff, then laughed.

"Nathan," Keith said as Nathan dismissed the notice regarding the bonus increasing. "My attacks were already infused with holy magic."

"What?" The heads of their four companions snapped to Nathan in shock. "Wait, have you and Keith-"

"No!" Nathan exclaimed, face turning red. "I am sleeping in my tent, not having sex with Keith!"

"Nathan and I haven't had sex at all here," Keith said. "My blessing came from before here."

"You slept with a god?" Michael asked.

"Or a goddess," William added.

"I've only ever slept with Evala, and she was a demigod," Keith shook his head.

"When did you get with a god?" Nathan asked Keith, who gave him an amused look. "I thought you told me if you were going to summon a god, or if you'd met with one."

"Nathan, we've talked about this," Keith said. "You know full well when I obtained the blessing."

"I do?" Nathan frowned as he thought it over for a few moments. "Oh, right. I do. If you already had the blessing, why did your damage increase when you started using the staff?"

"Probably," Keith answered. "Because the staff added a stronger holy bonus to it or something. I'm not sure."

"Wait, Keith met with a god, and you knew about this, and no one told me?" Samantha asked Nathan. "How in the world did you keep that a secret?"

"I don't tell you everything," Nathan said. "We finished this Dungeon, let's head back out."

"Have you met the god that Keith slept with?"

"No," Nathan answered, exiting the chamber without another word, while the others looked at Keith, inquiry in their gazes.

"I'm not sharing my secrets," Keith told them. "Nathan only knows because I had to walk him through it when I told him I had the blessing, allowing us to do some extra stuff."

"Like what?" Michael asked.

"My blood and cum can be used for weaker holy effects in enchanting," Keith answered. "So we can make weaker bullets, and not always sacrifice Nathan's health and blood in order to enchant a lantern. Let's go, Nathan's probably going to be cooking when we get out there. His stomach was rumbling towards the end of the fight."

They left the temple and found Nathan to be cooking at their camp, just as Keith had told them he'd likely be.

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"Okay," Samantha sat beside her boyfriend and put a hand on his back as he turned the ground meat. "Nathan, Keith said something… interesting."

"I'm not telling you how he got the blessing."

"Not that," she laughed. "I can tell he wants it to be kept a secret, and am going to make a guess that it was your father that he slept with, which is why he wants it a secret."

"I'm not going to reveal who he slept with for the blessing."

"Speaking of the blessing," Katie said. "It only lasts a year, doesn't it? Will it last the entire time if we do every Dungeon? Didn't you project that might take more than a year? If it fades, then we'll have to rely on Nathan's guns and your staff, which might not-"

"Blessings from gods last two or three years," Nathan said. "At least, from high gods, and they're the ones who are allowed to travel into our realm. Keith's blessing will last the entire time we're here, regardless of how long we take."

"Yeah," William said. "Unless we take two or three years. You guys said Keith didn't have the blessing at the isles, so it really depends on between which sessions Keith slept with the god."

"It'll last," Keith said. "Regardless of how long it takes us. I doubt we'd spend more than a year in here."

"I know I'm the idiot of the group," Michael said. "But the way you two are saying this, Keith and Nathan. It's permanent, isn't it?"

"No," Samantha snorted. "Nathan and Keith were testing you guys, to see if you remember the lesson."

"Shush," Nathan muttered.

"The lesson?" Michael asked.

"Blessings from gods," Samantha said. "Can last five to ten years, not two or three, and it's based on how powerful the person's magic is, not the god's power. They said 'several times' for the number of times it was necessary, requiring it to be done in under ten years and while blessings are active, other than the first one. I pressed Nathan to ask Ichtvar for clarity on that, and he said it takes five times in that period.

"Now," she said. "Whether or not Keith has the permanent blessing is irrelevant, because Keith himself is rather powerful, so the blessing will still probably last on the longer end of it, which is why they're confident. Keith and Nathan have headed out most nights since we returned to town, so it's a good guess to say that they split up one of those nights, probably one of the two or three before we came here, and that's when Keith met a god and slept with him. If it happened to be the last night before we left for here, then it's pretty much a guarantee it would last, as we won't get anywhere near the five-year mark."

"Keith's blessing will last our time in here," Nathan nodded. "And you and Katie have permanent blessings, too. You just didn't have the power necessary to actually hurt that thing."

"Yeah," Samantha said. "That boss was definitely something that only you and Keith could take on. The rest of us were pretty much just spectators. Now, on to my question, if that's okay?"

"Okay," he turned the meat again. "Break the pasta."

Samantha broke the spaghetti and put it into the pot, then stirred it lightly to keep it from clumping immediately.

"You guys use cum to make holy enchantments?"

"We have to make it homogeneous first, so that it's not all clumpy."

"And you went along with that idea of Keith's?"

"Don't blame me just 'cause I'm gay!" Keith exclaimed. "It was Nathan who decided to try it! He theorized it was possible since it's cum of a god or demigod and breast milk of a goddess of demigoddess which grants the blessing, and wanted a resource that wasn't as painful to extract as blood. I only found out he was testing it because he was experimenting with it on the Isles of Darkness and I woke up to pee one night and caught him shooting it into a bowl."

Samantha gave Nathan an incredulous look, then realized that doing something like that was exactly the sort of thing her boyfriend would do. He would have done it even if he didn't care about losing blood or lowering his Health to have a liquid which worked for it.

"You're a nut," Samantha whispered into his ear.

"Don't say that," he whispered back. "It might make me more attractive to Keith."

Samantha groaned at Nathan's comment, then returned to helping him prepare dinner. When their spaghetti finished, everyone ate, then Michael and Katie did the dishes, and Samantha sat and watched as Nathan and Keith began preparing new enchanted bullets.

While bullets were in limited supply, Nathan had assured the team that he had millions of bullets in his orb. Only Keith knew whether or not that was true, and he wasn't telling. As the pair didn't seem worried about running out, despite the long time they knew they might be in the Dungeon, the rest of the team agreed that they at least had tens of thousands.

To enchant the bullets after dinner, Nathan and Keith both cut at themselves until their Health dropped, then bled themselves some to fill a bowl three-quarters of the way each. After that, they had the heavenly storm elemental fill two more bowls with the same amount of its own water.

"Does it remain holy," William approached them. "If it's released from him?"

"Yes," Keith answered. "It's water he generated through his form, so by its nature, it's actual blessed water. If he simply generated the water using his magic rather than as a part of him, it wouldn't be holy."

"Um," Michael said from where he was practicing with a sword. "What's the difference?"

"One is generated consciously," Keith said. "The other regenerates over time. Think of their elements as being their flesh, blood, bones, and everything else which makes up our bodies. At once. All of it. If an elemental generates water, it would be the same as us generating water. If an elemental drops part of itself, it would be like us cutting off a limb. The big difference between us and them in this respect is that they regrow their limbs."

"I can do that if Ichtvar's inside of me," Nathan muttered.

"By themselves," Keith shot him an amused look, and Nathan realized he'd spoken his thoughts. "They also can't speed it up through magic. Doing this, therefore, makes my familiar a little weaker, as a result. Imagine fighting while you're regrowing your left arm, or your right leg."

"Well," Nathan said as he begin mixing some of the blood and heavenly storm elemental water together in a third bow. "Elementals aren't actually losing limbs. They just have less of the element to work with when changing forms, limiting their size."

"Which can still be crippling," Keith rolled his eyes, then turned his attention back to the others. "Which is why we're only using this much of his water. He can recover this much in a week. Anyway, the enchantment's rather small and time-consuming to make, and we need to rebuild Nathan's supply and bullets and create more past that. That way, we have additional back stock and don't need to remake them as often. Not to be rude, but if you guys could not bother us as we work, that would be appreciated."

"That means to either shoo or be quiet," Nathan told them, and everyone but Samantha left to do some evening training.