Nour reclines back on his seat and relaxes.

"So, there are no side-effects…" he mutters with a silly smile on his face.

"Just that passing through customs can be a little embarrassing if you don't take pride in the skill," I say in a low voice, we are basically whispering to each other.

My free town pass is more useful than for just skipping lines.

He holds his chin in thought and speaks, "I wonder what happens when you level it too far. Plenty of skills have a low level-cap so it's possible this one has one too."

"Why didn't you know much about it? I thought the priests taught us a lot about those sort of things."

"It's embarrassing to show others you have bed skills," he cringes and chuckles. The teasing I suffered makes his words ring true, "so most people suppress them, which leads to the priests not talking often about these skills unless someone asks for specifically."

"But the skills are just bed improvements, are they not? Why would you be afraid of them?"

"There's some more… weird skills that could have side-effects."

Oh yeah, there's that [Sexual Metamorphosis] skill or [Sexual Charm]. Now I remember that in the Miscellaneous list there's quite a few with concerning names, like [Tendrils], [Viscous Fluids], [Sweet Discharge], [Body Distension], and even Hana's [Pain Conversion]. Maybe I should study them for my kitsune transformation project.

"Yeah, I get it but you really shouldn't be afraid of them, most of them seem to be something you turn on if you want to," I say, "I don't think I ever heard of a permanent body change that's constantly on."

"Makes sense…"

We casually talk about our progress after that. Nour is steadily progressing through dungeons, he met a wandering group of dragonoids and has been avoiding the Smirk ever since then.

"They don't even need to be undead to be tenacious, an alteration-type is enough to keep them fighting for a long time," he says.

"Well their coordination was crap and they had no equipment so it was mostly a damn long attrition contest," Iana says, now joining our conversation.

"It kind of hurt a lot, though, we are lacking in the healing department," Midori says, "maybe we should hire a priest, or priestess," her lips curl into a small smile.

"M-maybe we could train Safiya in [Heal], she has some skill potential left so it shouldn't he hard," Nour hurriedly adds.

"Hmm…" Midori crosses her arms and thinks, her hand covers her mouth which I bet is hiding a smirk.

"A strong, male, and vigorous priest is a good choice, you can always have more men to help," Hana says with a smirk, "or a kind and shy angel for healing not only the internal wounds. Another cute little thing wouldn't hurt," she says and looks at Ciel, who shifts uncomfortably.

"I'm leaning more on the male priest, another big hand to help would be more beneficial," Midori says and narrows her eyes.

"I would prefer another Blood Slave, a young, petite, - girl would be easy to train as long as she had some talent in magic," Nour says in a serious tone and narrows his eyes at Midori.

The emerald dragonkin woman licks her lips and crosses her shapely legs. I see the muscles in her exposed arms grow slightly and her posture turns domineering.

Nour maintains his stare at Midori and grits his teeth. His brow sweats cold and his fists clench.

Midori exhales and her posture relaxes, it was like she flexed her entire body and soul. Nour smiles smugly and the silence that befell the room is broken by Aoi, who's rolling on a pile of gold coins and chewing on one, making clacking sounds as her scales and teeth hit the coins.

"Yes, another little play thing would be nice," Midori mutters.

I move to sit next to Aoi and pet her sleek belly full of small scales.

"Kweh," she makes a pleased sound and spreads her limbs wide for me, her puppy eyes draw me in and I use two hands to pet her. Monsters might not have a system, but I think Aoi's "Charisma" is still affecting me.

"So how did you tame a nature spirit?" Safiya asks while petting Gify on her lap.

"He just liked me and attached himself to me, so I guess it was luck," I say.

"Gih!"

"Don't push it. Your 'blessing' has only been a drain on our food reserves."

Gify pops out of existence then pops on my head and dances, ruffling my hair.

"Gah! Gify!" Alissa chastises and pounces, grabbing Gify in a quick swipe.

"Geheheh."

Safiya smiles adorably.

"There's a spirit that looks like a cat with an oversized head that appears once in a while, I have been trying to catch his attention and even learned how to chant [Animal Tongue]," Safiya says and receives Gify from Alissa.

Alissa comes back and straightens my hair.

"Gilh gif guh gor."

Safiya grins and says, "Thank you, I would love to have a spirit connect our minds at least once in our lives."

Nour looks and nods in understanding.

We leave some time after that so we can make our lunch. Rain is still going on so we put our cloaks and make our way home, I cast [Wind Armor] on everyone since it reduces the amount of water that falls on us slightly.

Space class is just reviewing stuff since next lesson is the final test. I decide to not show my style yet and pretend I'm focusing on using [Gravity Crush] to keep my opponent in place.

In the evening I focus on finishing my chant for [Infuse]. The rain continued up until now so we light the fireplace again.

As I watch Lina cast [Infuse] repeatedly my mind slowly clouds as I enter a trance. Deeper than a meditation, similar to Roxanne's intoxication but actually unpleasant. My heart turns cold, my mind devoid of emotions, my purpose unified, my desire a certainty.

I sense, I process, I react. Input, operation, and output. The small, tiny, individual pieces that make us, us, are divided and observed. It's not a neural network but an abstraction of action and reaction. In the end it is the same, but different.

The inputs and outputs relate to our perception, not just what we see and feel, but what we perceive. Our internal construct of reality is broken down and analyzed. We observe, compare to our internal beliefs, and react, then repeat endlessly.

Differences in comparison to reality and perception cause disorder, to survive we must keep the disorder at bay, controlled. We either change the world to obey to our beliefs or we change our beliefs to conform with the world.

Disorder is chaos, pain, suffering, surprise, but also opportunity. For we need the chaos to move us forward, to dislodge us from the expected, and force us into action to contain the unexpected.

A soul is not a bunch of lines of code or neural network, but a belief network. A spirit is the whole, it is a group of senses, beliefs, and actuators.

With a constant cadence and a flat tone I chant, "I invoke the genesis of life; from it, I construct an automata, an agent of change; I base it as a mere imitation of life and then alter it to my whim; I modify it to serve me better, I adapt it to serve me better; I hold this new soul in my hand and give thee fake life, [Infuse]!" I finish the spell and my hand glows.

My breathe quickens as if I was holding my breath, my heart beats fast as if I did a monumental effort, my mind reboots as if I was knocked out for a second.

I extinguish the spell and say, "Certainly an unpleasant magic school to chant."

"The emotions in casting is one of the first thing researchers try to remove to complete system magic, otherwise it's too tiring," Roxanne says.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

"I require cuddling, recharge my energies," I say and extend my arms to Roxanne. She jumps out of Hana's lap and lands into my arms. "Careful with those horns. How come you never skewer something with them?"

She turns to me and pushes them on my chest, the moment they touch me they suddenly turn rubbery, the sharp point doesn't even prick me.

"Interesting."

For once, Ciel has an uninterrupted training session with [Holy Spirit]. Even I benefit from training that spirit as I think I have been managing to grasp dual-casting of Electric and [Space Magic].

Ciel decides to go to sleep and Roxanne pushes her head towards me, asking for pats. I slowly play with Roxanne's horn as the coldness of [Golemancy] is cleansed from my body -.

-

Today is the 22nd.

"Awaken, my master," Alissa whispers in my ear.

I break out of my slumber and rise for another day requires conquering.

My [Golemancy] increased by 5 (now 9). I certainly had quite a leap in understanding.

Kyros shows me how to affect someone's mind. "You do not know who I am," the friendly-looking, middle-aged man with olive skin says. He strokes his puffy white goatee and stares at me.

"Yes? Something wrong?" I ask the man.

"What are you doing here?" He asks casually.

Where did he come from?

I suddenly notice my sword is stored away and I'm in a closed room with an oddly charismatic man. His small blue eyes stare at me inquisitively.

"Well I was training with my professor," I say. I can't admit I'm training in [Godly Language] to a stranger. I look around and frown, "now where is he…" I mutter.

"How does your professor look like?" He asks, a small smirk forming on his face.

I ready two fast earth elementals in my mind, this man is too suspicious and I have no idea where he came from.

"Well, my professor is… uh…" my voice fades as my brain races through my memories. Something is wrong, why don't I remember my professor's face? How did I learn so much about [Godly Language] without even learning his name!? "Wait…" I eye the man in front suspiciously, "did you mess with my head!? Did you use [Godly Language] on me!?" I raise from my seat and point my finger at him, readying [Discharge] in my mind.

"You will remember who I am," Kyros says hurriedly and I feel the weirdest déjà vu ever. "You are quite guarded, I didn't expect you to be this defensive," his eyebrows knit in worry.

"I hate mysteries," I say and sit down, my rapidly beating heart slows down, "even I didn't expect this reaction but I can understand why I acted like this. The hole in my memories was too great, I panicked thinking that if you can do this then what else could you do."

"So at least now you understand how difficult it is to actually mess with someone's memories."

"Yeah, there are too many details to convey on mere words, quite the puzzle."

"And it's all temporary, I stopped yours earlier but once the effect ends most people would instantly realize what happened."

"Good for some information gathering."

"But you will reveal your powers to your enemy then."

"Unless it's someone disposable," I say and Kyros nods.

In [Nature Magic] class I spend my time training with [Animal Tongue] so I can read deeper into the feelings of an animal. I don't want to show any of my main combat abilities on the final test since it gets put on my record and plenty of people would have easy access to it.

I spend my evening reviewing and then re-compiling my thesis now with [Writing].

"Shouldn't we spread this mana training method?" Hana asks, "It's honestly much better than the standard."

"Remember that Wolfy and I have to [Heal] you regularly," Ciel says.

"And I give you points in [Mana Control] during it," I say.

"And it's actually really close to [Godly Language]," Roxanne says, "Even I can learn it now, though I would be horrible at it I could still use it to invade someone's mind."

"Well, that's disappointing," Hana says and shrugs.

For the bed, I have Lina wear the black bunny ears cloak with black Clothes of the Berserker. She shyly comes to bed and sits at the border, twiddling her thumbs -.

"Maybe we should buy some animal ears tiaras," I say, "more convenient than using the cloak."

"To be honest it was a weird fashion choice to have animal ears on cloaks," Ciel says.

"Still, she is absolutely adorable," I say on a low growl -.

-

Today is the 23rd.

-

"I'm going to go look for an escort company and offer our services," Hana says, "The good positions should be opening by now."

"Sure, take care," I say.

I'll just train my mana a little. I'm not feeling very creative this morning.

Intermission 11

I go towards the Guild's Corridor. This must be the most boring part of town, the buildings are all straight, simple, and direct, only the rich merchant companies splurge and make their facade more interesting.

Heh, spending time with Wolfy changed me a bit, I never really cared about architecture until I saw him admiring every building we entered. I still don't fully understand why he's so curious about buildings but I can now at least appreciate when we enter a pretty house.

The men and women here are all quite pitiful too, pencil pushers, the lot. They look cute but I bet I would break their hips if I were to take one for myself. Wolfy is the cutest anyway.

A young scribe nearly falls over trying to stay out of my way. I give him a thankful kiss with my eyes and I see him shiver.

I really want to level my [Intimidate], but I'm not sure how. Maybe I should ask Wolfy about it. Oh yes, he could put some of my points on it and I could learn what's different when I level it up.

The scribe's eyes glue to me as I pass, my cleavage, specifically. A few meters away I look back and see him suddenly scamper off.

I laugh freely at his innocence. Look all you want for a look is all you will ever going to get.

Now, business. I have to search for the smaller companies, Lina gave me a list of the better candidates. I have to gauge their worth by the number of guards they are taking, too little and they are going to be a problem, too much and they are going to be an even bigger problem. We don't need the money so we don't need to risk joining the more desperate caravans, which also means we certainly don't need to risk being attacked by robbers by joining the valuable ones. The High Forest is on low security so it's almost certain we will be attacked if we join either.

Too bad I never came here before, I don't recognize any of these companies. In the end, we will have to gamble and go with one, there's no way we will really know how the trip is going to be like until we are actually on the road.

I wish Lina came too, I want to molest her so bad but Ciel is being prickly and monopolizing the cute bundle of cuteness.

I also wanted Aoi too, my head feels too light without her. The stares the three of us would get were delicious, too.

I walk out of the building and chuckle.

Okay, these wackos are going to die at the High Forest, no thank you.

Next on the list is... Este company. Ain't that the western Crown Lord's family name? Lina said these are the small companies so maybe it was a branch family that fell out of grace. Or maybe it has to do with the downfall of the Lord, the higher Lords would never be this incompetent without some shenanigans.

I reach the building and look at the facade. The building is kind of falling apart, maaybe they are on the "desperate" side, just maybe.

"Hana?" A familiar voice asks.

I snap my head towards the source and feel my heart tighten. My smile grows so wide my face hurts.

"Klein!" I yell.

A petite brown-haired-and-furred weremonkey woman runs up to me, I open my arms wide and receive her on my embrace. Her arms squeeze my waist like she wants to break me, I see that her toned and tanned arms are the same as always.

We break the hug and she looks up to me, beaming with a smile and jumping on the spot repeatedly.

"I-I can't believe this! Why are you here!? I thought you were going to be sent to prison!" She says so quickly and excitedly it's almost unintelligible. Heh, my vocabulary is improving, wait no, it was unintelligible.

"Calm down," I say and put my hand on her head, forcing her to remain still. "I was sold as a Blood Slave in here, one thing led to another and now my master is my fiance," I grin towards her.

She finally stops fidgeting and lets her mouth hang.

"W-who could keep you in line? Who could even survive you?" She asks, slack-jawed.

Someone who can instant-cast [Heal], as a start.

"Someone very special," I say and smile awkwardly. Praising Wolfy to his face doesn't make me feel embarrassed like this.

"Yeah, duh. I want to know how's he like? What race is he?"

I look around and see the pencil pushers are all holding back their giggling. This is not the kind of attention that I like, but Klein still doesn't care about these things.

A long brown tail tickles my nose and I look down.

"Let's go somewhere else to talk," I say and smile warmly at her.

"Okay!"

Wolfy is right, tea shops are kind of calming, the atmosphere is so nice.

Klein sits down and looks around nervously, her round monkey ears are twitching.

"I'm paying," I say.

Her head snaps forward and looks at me confused, "What? Aren't you still a Blood Slave?"

"My maste-, fiance, is very kind with money and we are well off now," I say and blush lightly. Gods, I turned into a hot-blooded hatchling again, I never really had to refer to Wolfy as my fiance so often before and now I realize how much my heart tightens when I say it.

"Oh!" Klein's eyes open wide, "That's wonderful, enviable. How big is his sword?"

"Oh, I didn't measure it," I make a mental note, "But do you even have experience on this?"

"Nope!" She answers with a smile then immediately let her shoulders slump and frown. "Da is still looking for a husband for me and he says that plenty of the men want a virgin."

"Screw that, the Goddess of Love told us to enjoy ourselves and so you should!" I slam my fist on the table and cringe when the tea seat clatters. "Dad wanted this too and look where it got me? I got sold as a Blood Slave still a virgin. It's paradise for me that my master has a sword strong enough for me. I don't even want to imagine if I ended up being sold a limp-one fat merchant somewhere."

Klein nods repeatedly with her eyes glued on me, "Yeah! Screw Da!"

"Maybe you want to talk to him before you actually do something," I say and awkwardly play with my cheek scales. I don't really want to be blamed if she ends up doing something stupid.

"Oh, is your fiance a noble? I heard they like to form harems of Blood Slaves."

"No, he's just a commoner, a rather rich commoner. But I do have a harem, technically it's his but I have two women as my playthings. Soon I will get the other two," I say and lick my lips.

"Women? Didn't know you like other women," she eyes me suspiciously and I shrug. "So, do you want to take me? Do you want to drain me like you said you would do to men?" She excitedly sways her body with a stupid smile on her face.

"I don't feel anything in particular right now, but if my master lets me," I give her a kiss with my eyes and she shivers just like everyone, "then I would gladly turn you into my bed slave."

"A-hahaha-hahahahah," she laughs nervously at first but then lets her true laugh come out.

"So, what are you doing here?"

She composes herself and cleans her throat, "Well, after you got taken we ended up being interrogated but eventually they released us. I was really scared we would get arrested too just because of our association," she says with a heart-wrenching sadness in her eyes.

Now that I think about it, it's likely the traitor was among the ones who suffered no repercussions. I have to get Klein to tell me their names, I don't want revenge but I don't want to ever see them again.

"Then me, Da, and Mom decided to go to a calmer place and went towards the High Forest. Boy, were we screwed, we didn't know about the rumors of how messed things were," she smiles wryly. "But it's not so bad, our Gentleman boss is quite experienced. His family is going through some troubling times so he lost a lot of money but he's already improving steadily."

If Klein is with them then it might not be so bad.

"Say, Klein. My fellowship is going to leave Rabanara and we are thinking of taking the scenic route, do you know if your boss is in need of experienced hunters?" I ask with a smirk.

Her eyes open wide, "Oooh! Yes!"