Once I had a good number of snugly fitting underwear, we started fitting normal clothes, and I pretended to fumble with them so the older maid would get closer to me and help.

Without asking, the younger maid helped me put on my pants, her hand deliberately brushing about my half-erect cock, then she patted my abs as she tried to "adjust" my belt.

The two gradually became touchier and touchier, clearly salivating over my body without me even needing to use aphrodisiac incenses.

Then I decided to go on the offensive and grabbed both their hands at the same time. "I don't know the customs of this world, but do servants wash the backs of guests like me during bath?" I asked them with a husky tone.

"Y-yes, sometimes," the older maid answered while the younger one nodded emphatically.

I gave them a gentle but sensual smile. "Then can I expect both of you to aid me during the bath today?"

"You can," the blonde maid immediately answered, and then the older maid nodded slowly.

"That pleases me," I whispered, then kissed each of their hands.

After that, trying out my heavier snow clothes was a lot harder as their hand shook with excitement and their legs rubbed against each other. I could've fucked them then and there, but I had always been a teaser and sadist, so I let them stew in frustration to enhance our fuck later.

Ledare's fashion choices were all rather rough on my skin for anything that didn't have fur, so I chose mostly furred robes, though I was forced to take pants for outside clothes since I didn't want my precious balls to freeze.

It was a shame, though, since robes are so easy to put on and take off, especially for sex.

Once my trunks were filled with clothes, I kissed the lips of both maids while I used [Pleasing Touch], giving them an electric shock of pleasure that fried their brains for a long moment.

"The armory is this way…" The older maid mumbled absentmindedly, having recovered first.

Since my weapon was normally a staff, I decided to go for a halberd with a sling that I could hang on my back, though I'd immediately abandon this weapon if I ever found an appropriate magical staff that could be used in melee combat. I was quite taller than the average male here, so the large weapon felt just right in my hands.

I counted myself as fairly talented in melee combat, though it was obviously not my specialty, so this weapon was only for when the front line failed to do their job, which I predicted would happen often.

I also got a round leather shield with a boss to carry on my back, but it was small and light, so I'd only use it to defend against arrows. And as a final assurance, I got a short sword in case I couldn't wield my other weapons.

For armor, the Quartermaster gave me some flexible leather that seemed very hard to cut, and a lot of fur padding that I could feel was high quality. They didn't have plate or mail armor to just give around, but at least with this I'd survive fighting against wild beasts, I believed.

"Aren't you supposed to be a mage? Can you even use these?" The ugly Quartermaster questioned me, sounding very skeptical, then he took a huff of his pipe.

I huffed angrily and glared at him. "Of course, I can. This halberd weighs just like my staves did, though I used them as blunt weapons since magical shields were more common back in my land," I pompously explained myself, and the old man shut his ugly mouth.

Curiously, I had found no ugly person so far besides the Quartermaster, which was a rather confusing fact. Even in Zabulen we always had to keep watch on the genes so that no ugly slave was accidentally born, so how come this primitive kingdom had so many beautiful people?

"These weapons will serve me well in case I enter melee combat, but I still need magical items to do my job as a wizard," I explained to the three present.

The Quartermaster took a few puffs of his pipe, his skeptical eyes appraising my decidedly not Wizardly appearance. "I'm not allowed to give you our more powerful magical weapons, but take him to Elder Sooka and see what he can arrange for you," he tiredly replied and waved us away with his pipe.

After we were out, I linked arms with the maids and they guided me towards the sage's block.

We had to take a rather cold tunnel to avoid going out in the snow, but then I saw a fire being lit under their dresses.

"What in the wild-sun is that?" I questioned them.

They smiled amusedly and the older maid politely asked, "Has the Grand Wizard never used a fire summon to warm oneself?"

"No, your summoning magic doesn't exist in my world."

The maids gave each other sly smirks and lifted their dresses at the same time, revealing their thin, alluring, pale legs, then I saw a ferret with fire for fur wrapped around their thighs.

"How curious," I mumbled and touched the little summon. The flame licked my finger, but it felt more like a silky, warm textile than actual fire.

The little animals barely reacted to my touch, so I lost my interest in them and slowly ran my hand up their legs.

They both gasped softly, then lifted their skirts higher, showing me their small panties. They were bland white pieces of cloth, so not particularly sexy, but they were surprisingly small, and thin…

I stood up and looked down at them, staring them in the eye while I rubbed their pussy lips through the fabric. They stared back with lewd smiles as their professional composure crumbled.

Then we heard footsteps coming towards us, and they hurriedly dropped their skirts, so I stopped playing with them.

"Let's continue," the older maid embarrassedly whispered, then they both grabbed my arms and pushed me forward.

The "sage's block" reeked of alchemy, so I understood why it was separate from the rest of the royal quarters. The smell of sulfur was the strongest, but I could identify some other contaminants in the air.

Once I caught a whiff of a particularly nasty smell, we all stopped and frowned, then we shared a slightly disgusted look.

"So, magic in my world isn't as smelly as this," I assured them, and we chuckled softly.

"The Summoners and Devotees smell nice, but the alchemists and sages are… difficult," the older maid whispered and smiled wryly.

They led me past the hall where the apprentices were practicing some crude witchery, then we entered a messy office. Shelves covered all walls, and they were lined up with either innumerous jars containing body parts of fascinating beasts preserved in a yellowy substance, or flasks marked as potions of varying effects; books and notes written in unintelligible scribbles were strewn about all surfaces, including the floor; a variety of crude staves were resting against the piles of books, and they looked like roots pulled out of huge trees, then fitted with suspicious-looking orbs; a few, actual dangerous-looking, fist-sized orbs that glowed with constantly changing rainbow-like patterns were stored behind a glass cabinet and carefully held by delicate stands made of crude metal; but the room clearly smelled of mold, making me wary of catching a disease if I stayed for too long.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

At the end of the maze of books, a small, wizened old man was mixing a disgusting-looking goop inside a small cauldron, and the flame that heated it came from a simple, small, metallic disk.

Curious.

He had his long white hair tied in a bun behind his head, and the sleeves of his black robe rolled up, exposing thin arms that worked with an energy that conflicted with his apparent age.

The older maid stopped before him and bowed. "Elder Sage Sooka, this is Grand Wizard Farnezian, one of the summoned Saviors," she introduced me, and Sooka finally took his eyes off his cauldron.

He turned to me, his bulging blue eyes pierced through my soul, then he squeaked like a small animal, "He shall save us!" And the maids repeated with a creepy, flat tone.

"I shall save you," I replied reflexively, going along with their eerie brainwashing to not stand out.

"Hah! I hope you do!" He squeaked again then closed one eye and scanned my body up and down. "Anyway, another mage? Hmm… are you sure you're a 'Grand Wizard'? You're really young, and your body is more that of a warrior. At least the other boy said he was only an 'apprentice.'"

If the mages of this world can get so wrinkly and weak, then I really shouldn't talk about the regeneration treatment.

"Yes, I'm sure," I replied flatly.

He raised one long thin eyebrow up. "Oh, you got a Panifu to make you pretty, then?"

I suppressed a sigh. "I don't know what's a 'Panifu,' and we don't have them in my world."

"Hmm…" He rubbed his pointy chin in thought, then grunted and shrugged, "Bah, I'm not paid to interrogate you. So, what do you need?"

"Any sort of magical item that can aid a mage."

He clicked his tongue and frowned, making his wrinkles deeper. "I got a lot of magical items, child, but most of them are going to get you killed if you don't know how to handle them. How did you use magic in your world?"

"Child"?! I'm older than you, you shriveled old cock!

I adjusted my glasses and grinned smugly as I laid it out, "I can build spells with magical items and connect them through the magical language, then channel my life-force through the magical structure to activate them. I'm also particularly talented in anything that involves energy manipulation."

He scratched under his white hair bun in confusion. "'Magical language'? You mean the chants the Devotees say?"

I shook my head gently and suppressed my condescending tone, "No, not that. I can write functions and energy converters with the magical language, but it has no relation to spoken words."

He shrugged. "Never heard of that."

Oh, fuck…

"Is there an After Life here? A place where all the souls of the dead return to, only to be picked again to be reborn?" I pressed him, starting to become a little frightened that all my Wizardly knowledge had suddenly become useless.

But Sooka gave me a satisfying answer, "That's what Bedama does. We're chosen from the Sea of Souls and brought to life by the Divine Guide."

I grabbed my chin in thought and pondered, "Then there must surely be a magical language. We just need to talk to these souls and discover it."

"You'll need to find a Shaman, then. There's only Tatindod here right now, and she lives with the Devotees in the Royal Block."

The tension left my shoulders and I released my held breath. "Thank you."

He snorted and grinned like a grandpa, which annoyed me since I was certain I was older. "You're alright, child. I'll give you some basic potions, and you can try out those staves over there since they seem to be what you want." He pointed to the ugly roots with his wrinkly, shaky finger, then turned around and started to collect a variety of ceramic flasks from the shelves.

I waddled around some piles of books, then grabbed the nearest root and observed it closely.

Surprisingly, my hand tingled as it felt the unknown energy the root held within, but my glasses didn't catch any magical energy coming out, so at least it was well-contained.

If the staff produced the energy by itself, then this meant that it'd be an actual help my spellcasting, or at least be more efficient than my multi-purpose soul wand. I didn't have my grimoire, so I could only do raw energy manipulation, but [Explosive Release] or [Unrelenting Corruption] that were written in my soul would be enough for now.

I passed a wisp of my life-force through the root then pulled it back, and I definitely felt like its power was boosted, though it was now "tainted" with some unknown energy. The orb embedded in the tip of the staff was red, so it might be related to fire or blood if Elementalist logic applied here.

I decided to pass some life-force through the orb to see what would happen, and it suddenly lit up with a weak light as it completely absorbed the life-force, then a warning appeared on the top left of my glasses, telling me that an unknown spell was being channeled.

I looked back at the blonde maid staring at me curiously and asked, "Okay, what did I do?"

"I don't know… but you need to put more magic into it if you want to activate the orb," she mumbled back, then turned to Sooka. "Elder! What does this staff do?!" She shouted.

"Wha…?" The old man quacked and looked back. "That one drains energy, it makes people tired and gives the wielder stamina."

"That's not… very powerful," I remarked with a skeptical tone.

Sooka glared at me and grumbled, "These are Flavorless training staves, so what did you expect? The ones that can turn this room into ash are stored somewhere safe!"

"But I need a weapon!" I shouted indignantly.

"Alright, you wild, stinky ferret, I'll show you a weapon!" He grumbled as he waddled to the glass cabinet, then he opened it and gently grabbed a pedestal that held a rainbow-colored orb. They all looked the same, but once Sooka brought it closer, I realized this one had a greenish tint to it. "Feed some of your power into the stand, but don't touch the orb, you'll regret it."

I extended my hand and gently touched the crude iron stand with my finger and fed some of my life-force into it. Immediately I felt it being violently absorbed by the greedy orb, then my life-force was squashed and ripped apart as if the orb was a wild animal. It was so wild that I lost all control over it, which surprised me greatly since I'm a Wizard, a master of the control of energies.

Feeling like my pride was wounded, I fed the stand a large amount of life-force, but that only made the orb's attack stronger, then the orb cracked, and my life-force burst out of it with the crackle of lightning, hitting me right in the stomach.

"FUCK!" I shouted in pain and bent in half, holding my stomach as my muscles trembled out of control. The maids squeaked in fear but immediately came to help me, then the older maid started praying in silence.

"You fucking squirrel! You're a failure as a Sorcerer, so I won't give you the good stuff!" Sooka chastised me and pulled the orb back, its rainbow pattern receding until only a faded green color remained.

"The fuck was that?" I grunted as I forced myself straight, then the older maid released her spell, and it eased my pain. "Thank you," I whispered kindly to her, and she returned a sly smile.

Sooka stored the stand back in the cabinet but threw the faded orb near the training staves. "A monster core. It held a simple spell that makes you lighter, but it seems like your blood is incompatible with the cores, so don't even think about wasting another one of mine," he warned me with a grumpy tone, then resumed collecting the flasks for me.

I waved my hand dismissively. "I don't need those rainbow orbs, the staves already help boost my magic, so I just need to find the more powerful one among them."

He didn't even look back as he grunted and answered, "Hmph… go for the staff with the black orb and feed it some of your power. If it glows with white sparkles, then it's the one that shoots [unraveling] lighting bolts. Standard mage weapon."

There were five staves with black orbs, so I tested each of them. One glowed with a creepy purple light, and I felt like it was a bit dangerous to play with it, so I quickly moved on to the next. The others barely responded to my life-force, so it was pretty obvious which was the right one once it started glowing brightly with just a bit of life-force.

"That one's still a training staff, but at least these faded orbs can be used by non-Sorcerers," Sooka commented from behind me, then I heard the clinking of ceramic and turned to face him. He held over twenty little ceramic flasks, all of them labeled as containing a sort of "power" within them. "I have no idea what a Wizard is, but since you can use a Flavorless training staff, then these should help you out."

I looked towards the maids, then the older one immediately bowed and announced, "I'll procure a potion bag for you, Grand Wizard."

"Please do," I replied politely, and she quickly left the office.

Sooka grumbled and carefully set down the potions on top of some books. "You know alchemy, child?"

I nodded confidently. "I do, but I have no idea if the ingredients of my former world are the same as this one's."

He immediately pushed a stack of papers off a table and grabbed the book hidden under them. "Use this book if you want to get started, then get an alchemy set from one of the apprentice rooms."

I received the book and decided to show back some gratitude. "Understood. Thank you for your aid."

But the old grumpy Sage was prickly. "If you want to thank me, bring me back a new [Featherweight] monster orb, you squirrel!" He squeaked, then returned to his cauldron.

I grinned back at him cheekily and opened the alchemy book. It started with a description of all common ingredients and their uses, and I immediately realized that, indeed, they were completely different from the ones in my world except for the base elements, like sulfur, iron, sodium, and so on. It was expected, though, since nearly all alchemical ingredients in Zabulen were from domesticated, artificial plants engineered for specific purposes, so there's no way I'd find anything similar to them here, in this uncivilized world.

"What are you cooking, Elder?" The young maid curiously asked.

"My tonic! I need it to give me energy," he proudly replied, then lifted his spoon and smelled the completely unappetizing goop.

I raised my eyes towards him in curiosity.

"It's in the book!" He shouted back, and I lowered my eyes again.

"Can I have a taste?" She sly asked, and the old cock chuckled.

"Of course. Here, lick it."

I decided to ignore the obscene sight as much as I could. Drinking fermented milk was one thing, and at least it was alcoholic, but that disgusting broth seemed very offensive to my nose and taste buds.

"Yummy!" The young maid exclaimed, and I shuddered.