"Don't…" Alissa immediately stops me with a low hiss.

I bite my lips and grin.

I want to say it.

"Don't…" She repeats, more forceful this time, and her dazzling orange eyes stare into my soul in warning.

I want to say it!

"Am-…"

She covers my mouth with her hand, muffling my words, then she sinks her nails into my cheeks. "You cheeky bastard," she hisses again, trying not to smile, then releases me.

I grin like a fool and relax in my seat. My future-dad job of annoying my wife was a success.

Caterina stares at us, her refined face inexpressive, but her gaze betrays a hint of confusion.

"Ignore them, they're just two fools in love," Yunia dryly calls us out, and Alissa blushes just a little bit, then Caterina slowly nods, and they go back to talking about heretics.

I grab Alissa's hand and start caressing it as I turn my attention to the view. The bridge is a glass dome to improve visibility, but it also makes it the best spot for sightseeing in the entire ship.

The High Trees are all more or less the same height, and their crowns' shyness leaves only centimeters of open air between them, so at this distance, all we see is a blanket of green with the occasional hole, where a village most likely exists.

We're at the height of the lowest clouds, so we occasionally pass one by, making it seem like we're avoiding fuzzy icebergs.

"Let's get closer to the glass," I suggest, and Alissa silently nods, already calming down from my domestic "abuse."

The bridge is mostly silent. There's the constant, low humming from the three propellers at the back, but besides that, we can only hear Yunia's and Caterina's whispers, and the occasional report from the crew.

Alissa's eyes give her a better view of the sky and the sea of green below us, so I use her to look around.

"W-would you like to use my scope, Your Highness?" The scout beside us kindly offers.

I look at the cute, tomboyish imperial woman and smile. "Why, thank you. I'll only use it for a few minutes to not impair your duty," I huskily reply and notice her take a deep breath.

I'll remember her face and then invite her one day for some "socialization."

I take her scope and use it to look around. It's quite potent and probably expensive, but it's also slightly blurry, so it's not that well-made.

As I look around, I spot a few black dots in the sky, which seem to have a dragon-like profile and appear to be slightly larger than average Dragolites.

There aren't many flying monsters above the High Forest because the thick canopies hide all potential prey, and diving into the dark forest is practically asking to be ambushed by the many monsters that skulk about.

On the other hand, the skies above aren't regularly patrolled for monsters, so whenever we find one, it's most certainly going to be quite large because the smaller ones are easily picked off in this rather hostile environment.

With the scope, I actually manage to take a look down through a hole and find the little elven houses inside it. It's a bit too blurry and unstable to see the ant-sized people moving about, but I use my imagination to fill in for what I can't see.

After having my fill of that, I return the scope, and then Alissa and I leave the bridge.

We enter the main body and pass by the large enchanted tanks full of magical floating gas. There are a few of the crew about, making periodic checks on them to make sure that they're at the appropriate levels and fill them up when necessary.

The Chimeras don't have perfect air sealing technology, so these tanks slowly leak the gas. Rubber is expensive, even for elves, but maybe it might be worth investing in improving the sealing to save on the crew's MP.

We walk through the entire ship, then enter the chamber for the propellers, and our ears are assaulted by the loud humming of the magical engines. Lina and Aoi are inside, inspecting both the engines and the room because they're making plans for how to better muffle the noise.

Let's see… sound is air molecules vibrating, so to reduce that, the energy needs to be absorbed by something.

Acoustic panels are generally made of foam or other soft material because they can vibrate along with the sound and better absorb the energy in the wave, so perhaps we could soundproof this room by covering it with either moss or grass.

I summon a nature elemental and use her to grow a pair of mufflers for Alissa's ears. She's kind enough to stay with me for the Blessing, so this is the least I can do.

I call our mages, and after convening with them, we decide to cover the walls with a specific type of wool-like moss. Thankfully, the room is made of wood, so it'll be simple to grow it.

We have three mages with [Nature Magic], but I don't want them to waste all of their mana on this. This is going to be delicate, but simple work, so I just summon fifteen nature elementals, draining most of my MP, and then I order them to use all of their mana on growing the moss while the Nature mages guide them.

Since we're not needed here anymore, the girls and I retreat to our Suite, and we notice the humming of the engines gradually becoming more and more muffled over time.

When we enter our private room, I suddenly get an idea.

Alissa smiles warmly and hugs my scaled arm against her thin shirt. "Bonding time?" She hums happily.

"Bonding time," I whisper back and grin.

I pull out our collection of elven hair and skin products, then we all strip and make a circle. It's time for a not-"group-fun" of caressing.

Human Aoi caresses me while I caress Lina, who caresses Alissa, who (teasingly) caresses Ciel, who caresses Roxanne, who caresses Hana, who caresses Aoi.

The golems wish to participate, but they don't want to get in the way, so I tell them to magically manipulate the brushes so that we can focus on our caressee's skin.

Like a cherry on top, Gify pops into existence at the center of the circle and kindly activates her "massage," making us feel like there's water flowing through every inch of our beings as if we were in a soul-Jacuzzi, which brings us close to pure bliss.

"We're just missing you," Ciel calls for Yunia, and my soul space bursts with chatter as all of the girls call for our elven queen.

She fakes a sigh and finishes her conversation with Caterina, then she quickly, but with restraint, makes her way back to us. Her pace is right at the threshold between walking and jogging.

When she finally arrives, she just about throws her heels and not-bikini away, then joins us, taking a spot on the bed between Hana and Aoi.

I tease my little girl's body with my claws, running their tips along her flanks while my tentacles massage her back, spreading magical elven oil all over her perfect, unblemished skin.

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At the same time, Aoi's pale, slender fingers play with my body. She mimics my delicate touch and gently tickles my inner thigh, and the feeling of it is enhanced by Gify's "massage," making my friend twitch from the non-spicy stimulation as it wants to get hard, but lacks the proper motivation to do so.

Alissa teases Ciel with her subtly spicy touch. The former is letting her cheeky nature take over while the latter is simply too weak to the fox girl to say no to this kind of caress. If only Alissa could also grow tentacles, I think Ciel would've also asked her to marry her.

"I wouldn't-… ahn~…!" Her angelic breathing resounds in my soul space as Alissa casually rubs her sensitive dark bits.

Ciel's desire slowly seeps into her caressing, and she begins playing with Roxanne's slender body, who quickly becomes ready, but she's too strong to fall to mere not-before-play, though she does channel the energy of her desire into a stronger touch.

Hana gladly joins in the fun and begins playing with Yunia, who then begins salivating over Aoi's slender and supremely feminine body.

And so, the cycle begins. Our desire seeps through [Bind] and feeds off of each other's, but we practice some self-control and stop just sort of tipping over our partners and making them request an actual plowing.

As we leave our minds open to outside influence, the golems' single-mindedness begins to infect us, drawing us all into a sort of trance and aligning our wills in a way that the Gestalt training never could before.

I decide to let my spicy sub-process take over, but it bleeds through and affects everyone else too, though it maintains the same level of spicyness as before. We just let ourselves enter auto-pilot, but then our awareness increases, and we begin to feel like our minds have detached from our bodies.

"An out-of-body experience," I whisper in wonder, and my voice echoes in the void of my mind.

"Surreal…" Lina's voice echoes right beside mine, wherever "beside" is, exactly.

"I feel like I'm swimming," Aoi remarks, her presence "here," but also "nowhere."

"We're 'separate,' so I assume this isn't what we intended with that 'Gestalt' training, right?" Yunia curiously asks as her presence makes circles around me.

I start to feel the "naked presence" of all of the girls, as if they were all sharing their senses at the same time, but it doesn't feel overwhelming. It's all just "there," as if it's a monitor screen that's just out of focus.

"Things are getting weird…" I mumble worriedly.

Alissa's full attention is on this "screen," very much in her "element" as she's now capable of sensing every detail of everyone's minds and bodies.

"It's not useful for battle," Lina affirms as her "presence" nods.

"Or for anything, really," Yunia wryly adds.

I hum and continue, "My spicy sub-process, that's when things diverted from moving towards a Gestalt."

We start to exert our will over our bodies again and gradually regain control over them, but now we're all out of the trance, so the synchrony is broken, and we let the carefully maintained levels of desire drop like a rock.

Gify stops her massage, and we all collapse on the bed, a bit frustrated and dazed by the odd experience.

Hana then grunts in anger, "The hell. We made so much more progress while naked and fooling around than we did while armored and training."

I grab my chin in thought and let my thick tail slap against the mattress as I reflect on what just happened, then things start to click.

Aoi turns me belly up and pulls back my hiding skin, revealing my glistening, pink head, now covered in pre-fluid, then she lowers her head and begins milking me while her exotic eyes stare at me with hunger.

I pat her head and share my thoughts, "You and I are both very spicy people, I can't even motivate myself to fight without thinking about love-making first, and the others have strong fetishes too, so it does make sense that a spicy environment would have a stronger effect on us than just sparring."

"It seems like there's nothing better to align our wills than our love for each other," Ciel warmly remarks with a bright smile.

"More like our thirst for women and Wolfy's magical sword," Roxanne retorts and snorts, making our chocolate angel pout.

"Both," Alissa eloquently asserts, and none of us can find any argument against it.

"The golems' influence also helped, I think," Lina hesitantly adds.

"They did," Ciel happily agrees and snatches Ted. The little bear disappears in her bosom and immediately resigns herself to her fate.

Then Yunia suddenly gets an idea, "What if we use [Weaverism] to connect our feelings together?"

I coo and smile, "Oh, good one. If it works, we won't need to spend half an hour or longer in a group fun before every battle."

My handsome expression makes her heart beat faster, but then the smugness takes over her expression as she processes the compliment.

"Wow, we just found a solution to such a horrible problem, huh?" Hana sarcastically grumbles.

I shrug. "It'd be a tad inconvenient."

"So unlike us to have love at the mere drop of a hat," Roxanne dryly adds.

I snort and wave my claws at her dismissively as I unleash in Aoi's mouth. "Alright, enough."

We still have some time before lunch, and since our entire bodies are already glistening with the heavenly elven products, we decide to just do some mana circulation training.

Once the clock reaches midday, we make our way to the small mess hall to have our meal.

We'll be sharing the table with the Captain, his XO, the High Officers, and the Templars, while the knights will have their turn later, and only then will the crew on the first shift eat. Klein and Anton are special, so they'll also share the table with us.

Though there are rations for everybody, there's no need for us to eat them, so I pull out a special meal for today: pizza, along with a standard elven meal for those who dare not enjoy the second-best dish after sliced bread.

"What dish is this…?" Alcander questions as he pulls on a pre-sliced piece of Margherita pizza.

I nod and kindly reply, "Pizza. It's delicious, I promise."

Kyora, the rather unfriendly blue-haired dragonkin, leans forward and stabs a piece of pepperoni pizza. "This isn't an imperial dish? It looks imperial," she grumbles, then the smell hits her, and she hums in hunger.

Caterina silently takes a slice of pizza à Portuguesa (a Brazilian flavor), and begins eating with impressive speed while also maintaining a level of composure worthy of a princess.

"Yes, it tastes like an imperial dish," she calmly states with a subtle nod, then quickly takes another bite. "One of the good imperial dishes…"

She seems to have two sides to her, and right now, she's giving us the "Punisher" side.

Most pizzas are made in the Italian style, with a thin crust and few ingredients for a delicate and balanced taste, but there's a few in the American style (which is the same as the Brazilian style) with thick crust and as many ingredients as possible for an explosion of flavors.

The elves and Alissa prefer the Italian pizzas while the rest prefer the American ones. Aoi is the only one who doesn't have a preference as long as there's meat on it.

Timas, the refined, monochrome werecat, starts to look a bit agitated, then he suddenly turns to Silvano and excitedly asks, "Are you really Silvano of the 'Silver Lightning'?"

And the annoyingly gorgeous man pulls his silky, silvery hair back in an exaggerated but also pretty damn fabulous move. Then he graces us with a smirk worthy of a movie poster as he smoothly replies, "Indeed I am. You're in the presence of the 'Champion of Colneria,' the strongest duelist of Elaria."

Kyora's harem all whisper excitedly, especially Poppy and Alonso, a dwarf and a halfling, respectively. They seem to come from the western side of the continent, so they should've heard tales of Silvano's prowess… which might've been a bit exaggerated as they passed through word of mouth.

"For a time," Alcander dryly adds, holding back a teasing smirk.

But it's hard to put a smug elf off-balance. "I should still be. I left at my prime while undefeated, and I haven't heard of anybody rising to the same level of fame as I did so far."

"What an interesting choice of servants…" Caterina cryptically remarks, her voice a bit colder than usual, then I notice that her eyes are trained on Aisco.

"What do you mean?" Yunia replies in kind, not liking where this is going.

But Caterina doesn't immediately reply, just continuing to stare at the golden elf weirdo, who shows no indication of having noticed that he's now the center of attention.

It's actually quite funny how Aisco simply doesn't give a damn about what anyone says about him. He just won't even engage with others unless he's specifically talked to.

He might be a sociopath… though I'm no mental health specialist to make that kind of claim.

Caterina turns her stern eyes to Yunia and begins interrogating her, "Do you teach your men personal responsibility? To understand that they are also responsible for the consequences of the actions they've been ordered to perform?"

The temperature of the room drops a few degrees just from the heavy weight that the Punisher puts in her words. Previous friendly behavior means nothing to her in the face of Wickedness.

But Yunia categorically replies, "Our men have too much loyalty to us for them to go against our orders without extreme discouragement."

And the Punisher sighs in annoyance. "Bold of you to admit such a thing to me, but at least you understand then the importance of upstanding leadership?"

I share a look with Yunia, and we exchange some quick mental words.

Just to mess with her, I assume the same demeanor as Yunia and respond, "Indeed, we do. We have a reputation to maintain, and we have complete trust in our Commander's integrity to uphold our values."

Caterina's thin golden eyebrows slowly knit into a frown as her eyes dart to me. "You delegate that responsibility to the Commander of the Lordsguard?"

And Yunia immediately finishes, making Caterina's gaze dart back to her, "Yes. We're too close to our soldiers to judge their actions without bias."

"Hm…" She hums softly, and her posture relaxes. It seems that this final answer has pleased her. "I heard some rumors. It seems that the Ryder family's harem is much larger than previously thought."

It's a bit jarring how fast she can switch between hot and cold, but nobody seems to want to linger in the grim mood.

I grin smugly and agree, "I don't know what those rumors are, but yes, it's most likely true."

Then the conversation quickly returns to being casual again, but I pity Nohopu and Kurii a bit because they have a hard time relating with the Templars.

After we have our meal, we go spend our time leisurely atop the Floater. The ship uses a [Fly] gem, which creates a bubble around it to reduce drag, so the exposed upper deck is protected from strong winds, making it quite the popular spot for the crew.

At most, we can feel a breeze from the small amount of air that's allowed to pass through the magical bubble, and in this hot weather, it's quite refreshing, though I still pull out a tent for us since the sun is pretty punishing.

We don't feel like training anymore today, so when Lina pulls out a book to read, I immediately put my lap loli on her rightful throne, then I look over her shoulder and listen to her inner monologue as she reads.