After everyone is healed and our headaches are dealt with, we gather again at the round table. Officers and Lords sit while the knights remain standing behind us.

We tiredly sit down in our large and comfortable chairs, then I sigh softly. It's really stressful to give 110% during battle. Even though we won't run out of MP too easily, we pay for that with our mental stamina.

"May I help you relax, Master?" Jarn obediently requests, and I just nod while blinking blankly, curious about what she's going to do.

She [Equip]s her multiple arms and warms them with [Manipulate Metal], then they promptly attack all of my weak spots with a surprisingly nice massage. Her metal hands are padded with gloves, making them rather soft, and she seems to know exactly where to press on my horns and tail to give me pleasure.

"We've observed every massage you've given or received, Master," Jarn explains.

"We also know every arousing zone of your bodies, Masters," Ted adds as she "looks" at each of us with her beady eyes, and Ciel raises her eyebrows at the little bear in her chest.

"That sounds wonderful. Why do you even bother with other women when you have them?" Léonne immediately questions.

While Ciel and Lina blush, Yunia categorically replies, "They lack creativity. They know how to give extreme bliss, but they don't know how to keep it interesting, so eventually, it becomes boring, like eating the same meal every day."

"That's why we prefer Wolfy's Dragon," Hana casually remarks with her eyes closed in delight. She's also receiving a massage, but from Suzy and through little steel balls that roll along her tense muscles. She's the one who did the most physical exertion, so she also deserves a nice massage.

"I understand. Toys are never as good as the real thing," Léonne agrees with a nod, then sips her tea.

Ofilia continues serving tea in silence, doing her best to ignore the conversation, and she avoids looking me in the eye as she pours it into my cup, but I notice a faint blush appearing on her jade-like expression. Jacques and Allura aren't exactly comfortable with the topic at hand either, so we drop it, but I give Allura a seductive glance just to tease her.

After we've all unwound and eaten a little, Léonne begins the after-action report, "So, what did we learn from this exercise?"

The men hesitate to answer as they carefully think over their words, but then Allura playfully speaks out loud, "That Lords are scary?"

The tense air lightens up a bit, and Nohopu cheekily follows up, "Shall we vote on this? All in agreement with this assessment, speak out loud."

"Yes…" Everyone hums in unison, with Silvano begrudgingly following along.

The squirrel-headed man nods in acceptance. "Then it's agreed; our Lords are scary."

"The golems are also scary," Alcander quietly adds, his expression still calm and dignified, and I chuckle softly.

But Léonne immediately puts us back on track, "While the Ryders seem to be able to fight against endless numbers, it appears that they have difficulty interrupting the spells of High Mages."

Life returns to Aisco's eyes for a moment as he quietly chimes in, "Yes, that is the weakness that I've identified. Area spells cast directly on them don't work, but keep the spell a few meters above them, and they lack the 'Magic Power' to interrupt it even if they combine their wills."

"We can just fly towards spells and interrupt them as long as the sky is safe," Roxanne points out.

Roxanne's Reminder: interrupting spells becomes easier the closer one is to the spell.

But Léonne cautions us, "Be wary of traps. If I were your enemy, I would certainly try to assassinate one of you the moment you flew up to interrupt a spell. Low altitude targets are extremely easy to hit."

And I admit, "True. Our own assassination tools are easier to use if the target is flying in the open."

"After our allies arrive, if they don't have enough High Mages, we should bring more of our own to compensate," Jacques affirms to his wife, who nods in agreement.

"It's a shame we don't have more High Court Mages. We have the resources to hire them, but there simply aren't enough with the talent to become one," Yunia wistfully remarks.

Not just High Mages, we also have room to hire a lot more knights. After Yunia's father was deposed, a good number of their men retired or were scouted by the other Lords, so it'll take time for us to grow our numbers back to the max we can support.

Léonne gracefully nods and gives everyone a look as she continues, "Any other insights?"

"Skill levels are meaningless when they can just use spells faster than you can think," Montague states, and Alissa detects a hint of bitterness in his voice, likely due to how fast he was taken down by our combined attack. After his long duel with Palo, it must've been quite shocking to be absolutely helpless before us.

And Silvano promptly adds, his tone obviously bitter, and not without reason, "I've been in a wide variety of small-scale battles, and I believe Their Highnessesse-… erm, are invincible against anything weaker than a higher Lord."

But Yunia gently replies, "We had to commit hard to take you down, so people of your level still present a danger to us if we can't deal with them quickly."

And his gorgeous face twitches as he tries very hard to not smile smugly. His pride has been left wounded after these two exercises, so a bit of ego-stroking won't hurt.

Silvano's presence still annoys the dragon within me due to confused masts, but I've become more sympathetic about him after hiring the bigger weirdo that is Aisco, so I kindly add, "Out of everyone in the exercise, you were the second hardest to take down, and Yunia is the only one of us who can do it without using our other, more limited tools."

And it actually amuses me to see him glance smugly at Alcander, the two trying not to smirk, pout, or banter at each other since we're in the presence of important people.

"Though your coordinated attack is powerful, we can expect Katasko to have prepared something to counter your instant-cast, low-level spells," Léonne wisely cautions us again.

I nod in agreement and follow up, "Then I think we need to focus on making more of our 'toys' that can deal with Lord-level opponents."

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After the meeting, the men return to their training, now with the Lordsguard joining in, while the girls and I rest on our balcony. Using so much MP so quickly and then refilling it repeatedly was a bit stressful.

I want boooobs, so I turn into my lap-dragon form and stick my face in between Hana's elastic balloons. The faint smell of sweat mixed with her sensuous perfume feels quite therapeutic for me.

She has already recovered her physical stamina, and she uses her big, strong hands to play with my little horns. Poosh is the one with the best [Massage] due to hand's-on experience, but Hana comes in at a close second simply due to the strength she can apply to my hard horns.

I just open my little arms wide and sink my claws into her jelly-like goodness, then I knead them like a cat. She's my living stress ball that I also plow, and we're both suffering from post-battle excitement, so I think things will escalate real soon.

"I believe that we can still improve our Gestalt further if we meld our minds," Yunia suddenly remarks soberly.

I lift my head from the boobs for a second to reply, "That's dangerous."

"We've already managed to perfectly sync our minds a few times already. We just need to find a way to reach that same state through training," Alissa clarifies for me.

And Yunia sends the sl-tty fox a raised eyebrow. "I imagined you would jump at the opportunity to meld your mind with Wolfy's."

"I don't want to become him," Alissa replies, her ears flat from awkwardness.

Our coordination is great, perfect even, but the real point of the Gestalt is to go further than that, and we haven't actually progressed that much in that area.

I raise my head from heaven again to add, "Increased connectedness seems to be taking us down the right path, tho, even if it results in the crime of meme theft."

The thieving succubus grins slyly and readjusts her thieving glasses on her little thieving nose as she thievingly replies, "I just can't help it. I know you try to keep these thoughts contained, but it just feels too good to say them to hold back, so they keep escaping my mouth."

I turn around and press my head back against the booba as I soberly retort, "Identity theft is not a joke, Roxanne. Millions of families suffer every year. Those memes are mine, and you aren't allowed to misuse them."

She wants to slap back, but Alissa gives her a glare, and her spiral horns glint with a sudden sharpness as she pouts. "I'll try to control myself, then."

The pillows call to me, so I turn back around and pull down the straps of Hana's dress. Her pointy bits have become quite sensitive since we all love playing with them, so she voices softly as my tongue rubs their tips.

"I'd prefer that we continue our training for a while longer before attempting to perform a forceful and dangerous mind-meld," Ciel states as she glances at me, totally not jealous of Hana.

"It's been a while since we've had an out-of-control 'syncing' moment," Alissa remarks absentmindedly as she stares at me, her own bits aching for it.

Those were the "accidental" syncing moments, which are a lot more intense than when we deliberately sync our minds.

"Those all happened during bed activities, right?" Roxanne asks out loud with a suggestive grin.

But Alissa wistfully replies, "The ones who haven't experienced it yet are Ciel, Lina, Aoi, and Yunia."

"And the golems," Ciel quietly adds.

"And the golems," I repeat, my voice muffled by the pillow in my draconic mouth.

"I'm not one to say no to intense, mind-melting love, but I think a true Gestalt is more than that," Yunia wryly retorts.

Then something starts to nag at me at the back of my mind. Sense sharing, thought syncing, mind-melding… we're stumbling in the dark, trying to achieve something that we don't even fully comprehend. But I do have an inkling of understanding about what might be going on.

The brains of humanoids in Rupegia have a lot of extra functions when compared to those of Earthlings simply due to the fact that magic exists. Sub-processes, elemental spirits, control of extra limbs, our telepathic communication, the insanely fast learning of skills, anything related to "seeing" spells and the inside of souls, and many other functions simply wouldn't be possible back on Earth without magic.

And if it's related to magic, then it can be controlled in more "abstract" ways. Magic is the opposite of technology as it isn't "precise." It works on intuition and reflexes rather than the perfect mathematical and logical calculations of programming languages. The skill system "game-ifies," or rather, "standardizes" magic in a way that makes it extremely easy to use, but any mage worth their salt knows how to push past the system's limitations and do basically anything they want.

Our approaches to [Golemancy], [Bind], and our Gestalt have been tainted by my Earthling mentality due to the many dangers of studying unknown magic, and not even Roxanne wants to experiment with something that isn't in her area of expertise. But in the end, each time that I attempt to push my research further, it just reinforces the need for me to learn the deeper theories of magic.

We're trying to connect our minds in ways that can't just be explained through traditional Earthling science, or at least the science that I know isn't evolved enough to explain it. [Bind] is just too simple of a connection for us to consistently achieve what we want to do, so we need something better, a more comprehensive spell that gives us more tools to work with.

The infusion of the "consumption" abstract concept into [Fire Magic] spells allows a mage to burn through matter many times faster than usual. The infusion of an "explosive" abstract concept into [Fireball] is basically the most popular use of an abstract concept in the entire world since it greatly improves the spell's firepower. Even Roxanne's [Explosion] is mostly just an abstract concept where she uses her emotions to fuel the spell.

These "concepts" are like open-ended tools that allow mages to do anything they can imagine as long as it's related to the concept, so we need to infuse a type of "connection" abstract concept into [Bind] to achieve a true Gestalt.

But this means that the list of things we need to research has gained another entry.

I've been delegating different research projects to promising people, so who can I throw this project to?

Sainalai has been researching Jarvis and how the spirit Chimeras can share a physical battle body with a golem, so maybe she has some insights into how two spirits can talk to each other in more meaningful ways. Having a Celestial Horn use [Bind] on a golem-possessed suit of armor would certainly aid them in fighting as one.

I could give her this project while I try to get into her little halfling-loli pants. But still, delegating this task won't reduce the need for me to learn magical theory since there are other pursuits that would benefit from me having that knowledge, like [Golemancy] and the baby golem army project.

"That's one damn long introspection, Wolfy," Hana complains, starting to get uncomfortably excited.

I switch bits and grin internally at her. "You know that I love nothing more than doing it while theorizing," I explain through [Bind].

But she immediately retorts, "I'm going to need your full attention for the kind of plowing that I'm craving for."

I stop and ask, "You want to try to attempt a 'syncing'?"

She stares intensely at me with her yellow lizard eyes as she whispers with a steamy tone, "I need you to bend me in half and jam your huge draconic things inside all, then smack and pump all day long until I forget the pain of dozens of [Tremors] all over my body."

I immediately give an order to the golems, who pull out a gag and belts from their [Item Box]es with a *poof*. "Alright, bend over."

I look down from the balcony, and my eyes meet with Hukarere's as she sniffs the air, so I grin at her as I reach the summit, and a few seconds later, my white wolf grins back as she recognizes the smell of my magic. Then I make eye contact with the other Companions, who become distracted and frustrated as they realize that I'm doing someone right in their view while they're still on duty. Though, Hana's hair occasionally peeking above the railing of the balcony should give them a good idea of who I'm doing right now.

I bind Hana and abuse her body, but then I try something different and neglect her while I play with Roxanne. The dragonkin's frustration rises to such a high level about 70% of her body gets covered in scales, and I even see what look like the stubs of horns and a tail growing at a very slow pace, but she's struggling so hard against her bindings that I fear that they'll break, so I leave a gift inside Roxanne and press Hana against the table again.

"Fine, you wh-re. I'll give you what you want," I angrily growl at her, and she almost cries tears of joy.

I sit down in my chair and breathe in deeply as I savor the female smell in the air. Sadly, things are a bit too quiet as everyone is exhausted, so I drink my tea in silence and lovingly observe their sweaty bodies as they recover from multiple successive climbs to summit.

Hana and I feel refreshed, though, but my favorite redhead also needs some rest before she can talk… or sit, or walk, or even just stand.

"Gih," Gify chirps as she pops back into existence on the table.

"Thank you, Gify. Also, I'm happy that you're getting more involved in battles," I softly reply.

She folds her chibi wings anxiously, but then nods in appreciation. She's still a bit cowardly, but she's getting better.

Then she warps her little beak into a pout as she reads my mind, but I just smile and start petting her back, so she gives up and begins eating her food like a damn Kirby.