Aoi runs towards the water and stops after a few steps when the cold waves hit her chest. Gify continues on a few steps further than her before he stops and gives an odd look at Aoi.

"It's cold!" She protests.

"It'll get better once you go in deeper and your body adjusts to the water's temperature," I say.

"Okay," she answers and darts forward. "Still cold!" She yells back only a few seconds later.

"Dive and stay underwater for a few seconds!"

Roxanne and I hold hands while we watch Aoi and Gify disappear underwater, then they resurface a good ten seconds later.

"Okay! It's better now!" Aoi yells.

"Gih!"

Whodathunk that Gify wouldn't know what the ocean feels like.

I enter the cold, but refreshing water with Roxanne and we giggle a little as the waves hit us and make us shiver.

We walk forward until the water covers our belly buttons, then we look at each other with mischievous grins.

"We have to dive, now," Roxanne says.

"That we do," I say and hug her. I lift her up and throw both of us into the water.

"UNYAAA-…!" Her scream of surprise is interrupted by a mouthful of water.

I release her and swim a little to distance myself from her.

I surface and see her unnaturally white and perfect skin starting to turn red with anger as she coughs up seawater.

"Don't tell me you weren't thinking the same thing!" I yell to her and she slaps the water, sending a salty splash towards my face.

"I'll make you pay!" She yells back and awkwardly tries to run towards me.

"No, you won-…"

I feel mana being used and my back hits a solid wall of water.

"Shi-…"

I can't finish my curse as [Water Wall] sucks me in and covers my entire body. I struggle and try to swim away to no avail.

Suddenly, the spell ends and I fall into the water, just to feel two sets of delicate fingers hold my head underwater.

Two can play at that game.

I stretch my arms forward and easily find her thin waist, then I spread my soul out of my body and cover hers.

Her hands tremble and her arms weaken, allowing me to surface again. I immediately hug her around her waist and throw both of us back into the water again.

She spends more mana, and this time I feel my face go dry and the pressure of the water abates. I open my eyes and see her face smirking back at me, completely unimpeded by the water. She has cast [Water Breathing] on both of us.

We both float up to the surface, our eyes locked on each other. I approach my hand to her cheek and it immediately dries once it enters her spell's "bubble."

"I love you," she says in an eargasmic whisper.

"I love you more," I say and kiss her before she can shoot back a response.

I'll get the last word!

She pulls back just enough for me to see her thin red lips curl into a mischievous smile. I know exactly what she wants.

"They'll see," I say with narrowed eyes.

She whispers in my ear, worming her way into my brain and giving me another eargasm, "Let them all see. Let the world see."

"Your private parts are sacred. No unworthy man will ever see us make love."

She puckers her lips in a cute pout. "Can they at least hear me moan?"

I smirk and summon three water elementals.

"Make a small dust screen to shield us from view," I order.

The elementals lift up some dust and create a circular blackout screen around us, then they manipulate the water we are in into a bowl, so that you'd have to be pretty high above us do our thing.

Aoi and Gify enter the bowl and Aoi watches us while Gify quickly gets bored.

"Gih."

"But I like to watch," Aoi says.

"Giih."

"Seeing them play makes me happy."

"Gih."

"He's only… feeling lonely," Roxanne says with a smirk.

"Gih!"

"I'll hug you after we are done," Aoi says and Gify turns around with a huff.

I make the elementals stop and the sea returns to normal. I hug Roxanne's back and she wraps her tail around my waist.

With [Water Breathing] and Roxanne's summoned bat wings, we can easily float in the calm sea without any worry about stray waves.

Since her neck is dry, I fill it with kisses -.

Aoi and Gify leave our secluded area and start playing, racing each other in the water.

For a good half-hour, we remain like this and I extract faint moans of happiness and comfort from her.

I can see that her stare is glued to the horizon, but she's not taking in the view; her mind is on what lies beyond.

"Maoka is pretty close. Do you want to visit your family?" I ask.

She remains quiet for a few minutes and her heartbeat slowly gains speed as time passes.

"No…" She finally says, using in one go all the confidence she gathered, then her voice grows faint. "I don't… I don't want to meet Mother again, not yet."

"You can't run away from this forever," I say, softly.

"I'm not…! I just think that there are other, more important things to do right now, like the trial and the 'Legado' dungeon."

"Alright."

She grabs my hands and kisses them repeatedly. "Thank you, thank you for all of this and being there for me, but for right now, I don't want to go back."

"Okay, I'll accept that. But after we deal with these two things, we are going to visit your family."

"Okay…" She agrees in a faint voice.

Aoi and Gify swim in circles around us. Then they start wrestling and pulling each other down underwater.

Gify pretends to "drown" and "cough" so it seems fair to Aoi, but it really isn't; he has much more ease moving in the water than Aoi. Even with her nearly endless draconic vigor, Aoi eventually tires from the constant intense playing and crawls on top of us. Gify soon follows and we get two bundles of joy crawling all over us.

"Wolfy, I want more blood or the other thing," Aoi says.

Roxanne casts [Water Breathing] on Aoi and makes me straighten my posture. "Let's go a little deeper and you can get both," She says with an evil smile, which coupled with her wet hair, gives her a kind of "the ring" vibe to her.

"I don't like that implication," I say and pinch her ass, then I turn to Aoi. "If you draw blood without my consent I'll punish you… and it won't be sexual."

"Okay…" Aoi says with a bit more disappointment than I feel comfortable with.

Thinking back on Gify's vision of dragons mating, blood wouldn't be uncommon if the female is strong enough and feels like resisting.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Alissa and Klein soon join us and they give us kisses with their breaths showing evidence of what they did, then we start watching the two girls play Zeiktov.

Ciel and Hana's game starts out casual as each adapts to the other's play styles and they learn more about the game. When we start fully paying attention to them, then they pick up the speed and ferocity, rivaling Alissa and Klein.

We go to the shallower part so that we can sit and more comfortably watch them.

Ciel commits a crime and uses her sash to restrain her bouncy breasts. The pain is worth it, Ciel. The pain is worth the divine sight of the massive bouncing of her delicious brown balls filled with the hopes and dreams of men and bi/lesbian women alike.

Thankfully, Hana's jelly-like balloons are also jiggling wildly as they play. Her tough body won't get damaged so easily by a mere bounce. She completely trusts her criminally small bikini to cover her, which might make it the real MVP of this situation since its task is definitely not easy.

The two are playing for the long game, so they try not to overexert themselves. Ciel has less "Endurance," but she has much more "Speed," so she's playing it smart instead of contesting for control all the time.

Hana's versatility is low; she's good at reacting but not at controlling the game to make the plays she wants. Though she's slowly becoming more cautious and managing to plan her actions ahead.

Ciel stops and narrows her eyes. "You're trying to tire me out, right?" She asks.

Hana grins and says nothing.

"You definitely are."

The match continues and now I notice how Hana is striking the ball in a way that it always goes to the furthest corner and away from Ciel.

Ciel's movements slow and she begins to pant. Her chocolate body shines in the sun as the sweat drips off of her.

Hana switches gears and becomes aggressive. Ciel winces in pain as she tries to keep up with Hana.

Hana shoulder-checks Ciel and makes her fall heavily to the ground. She scores and looks at Ciel worriedly, thinking that she might have gone a bit too far.

Ciel [Heal]s herself and sighs. "You win. It was my mistake for not setting up a score limit for this."

Hana grins and offers a hand to Ciel. She pulls her up and hugs her so she can steal a kiss. They remain like this for a few moments longer as they catch their breaths and stare daggers at each other.

"I'm still the top bitch," Hana says and kisses her again.

"I'll gladly give that title to you," Ciel says with a shrug and they disentangle.

"But that means you're below me. You're mine -."

She glances at us and shakes her head while smiling. "Do I get to be above Roxanne?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll take it."

"Hey!" Roxanne complains. She casts [Water Wall] above them and immediately releases it, giving them both a quick bath of cold water.

"Do it again! That felt so~ good!" Hana asks.

Ciel takes off her wet sash and lashes it like a whip.

"Mama Roxy is being naughty!" Ciel yells, full of sass.

Hana grabs her shoulder and smiles. "Please, I won't let my women fight over me," she says. Ciel and Roxanne give her a withering glare, but that only makes Hana laugh out loud. "If you two aren't my bitches, then you'd better prove it."

Roxanne immediately looks away and pretends nothing happened while Ciel reluctantly accepts her place in the hierarchy.

The two sweaty goddesses take a swim along the beach to cool themselves off and join us in our enjoyment of the water. Lina comes with the golems and they float in the air above us with [Telekinesis].

We see a few ships passing by, but this route is only for long hauls. South of us, there's a cliff that protects the Sea of Trees from prying eyes, which impedes coastal cities from being founded and improving the route. There are only two stops between here and Lost Hiyoku Hara, which makes this sea route much less attractive than just going by land.

I use the water elementals to fish and summon small golems to prepare the catches for us. There's only "normal" fish here due to the Sea Soldiers keeping all the water monsters away. But even these "normal" fish look a little frightening and carnivorous, so it's kind of hard to differentiate between them.

Klein seems to be getting a little attached to Alissa lately, triggering a small amount of jealousy from Hana. The two wereanimal girlfriends season the fish for us and teach a fire elemental how to roast them while we continue to soak in the water.

The salt and sweat make our skin get sticky, but a simple [Clean] is enough to remove any discomfort.

Then we have our sea-side lunch and after that, we play some more in the water.

I sit down with the golems and train my [Soul Manipulation]. I grow a tail just like Roxanne's and cast my special [Materialize].

"Seriously, Wolfy, you look hot… well, hotter than usual," Roxanne says and bites her lip.

I increase the size of my tail and horns. She sucks in air and says, "If I wasn't still feeling the tingling, I'd pounce on you right now."

I stretch my own tail and tickle her below her chin. She grabs the dagger-tip and licks it sensually, though her tongue sinks a little into the not-completely solid tail. I feel an odd sensation, but it's not really pleasure.

"Do you feel with your tail just like how you feel with your skin?" I ask her.

She stops and looks a little confused. "Yes, I do."

I frown and start to think. "I don't. I might have to look deeper into your tail to see if there's some sort of nerve that gives you a more complete sense of touch." My temporary distraction is already enough to have my soul revert to being back to blue and immaterial.

"Please do," she says and immediately lays her tail on my lap.

Just having her cast spells isn't enough to understand the full extent of her soul. To understand how her magical nervous system behaves, I have to stimulate her tail to see where and how the stimuli travel. For science.

I recruit Hana to help me with this experiment.

The answer is that her skin has a thin membrane responsible for the tactile sense. Disturbances (i.e. touch) triggers its "structure" and sends a mana pulse along mana-infused pathways that enter her soul and connect to her "spine organ" inside it.

I try to "force" my soul to become exactly like her tail and I just feel something "click" inside my head, then I feel something change within me. I've been seeing her tail as something "separate" from her, but in truth, it's just as much of a limb as her arms.

It's just something that I can copy due to my special ability with the soul, which made me start with an inaccurate perspective about it. Since magic in this world relies so heavily on visualization, it's no wonder my [Soul Manipulation] took so long to develop; though, Ciel would say that I'm a cheater, so my research is actually progressing pretty fast in comparison to a normal person.

Anyway, I can't see the soul organs as being different from my soul "stretching" and even from my soul space. They are all the same, with just three levels of depth.

[Alteration Magic] makes permanent changes and what I can do is make temporary changes. I've somehow applied the abstract concept of "temporary" to my soul stretching skill (which might be because I think of my skill as "stretching" instead of something like "extending"), then I've added a sub-process to it so that I can keep it "on" all the time.

I thought that the soul was much more difficult to alter than it really seems. Now that I think about it, I can see the similarities between mana and the soul. Mana is abstract and amorphous, and the soul is our gateway to mana, so it makes sense for it to be so "moldable."

So, I need to not just "force" my soul to "bend" in a specific way, I have to add all the inner organs and connect it to the rest of my soul. I just hope that I don't screw up one day and kill myself…

I look at Gify and an idea comes to my mind.

"Do I really need a body? Can I change my soul to be like yours, Gify?" I ask.

His cute large eyes open wide in surprise.

"Gih!" He desperately tells me to not even try that.

"Okay, why?"

"Gih."

Seems like the Gods are chaining our souls to our bodies.

"That is scarily close to undeath, Wolfy, don't even try it," Ciel says, a little fearful.

"Alright, alright, it was just an idea."

I finally open my "Status" and see a new skill, [Soul Manipulation (creator)]. I look out of our open tent and smirk. The sea and the inside of our love nest make for a beautiful background for the historical moment: the day that the sexual revolution began.

I look at Roxanne and cast [Materialization] while she slowly gets up from the bed, thoroughly exhausted. Then she looks at me and her legs tremble.

Perfect succubus horns and a perfect succubus tail adorn my body. Ciel calls the others back and I feel a little embarrassed at the gawking stares they give me.

Alissa approaches me and caresses one of my horns. The odd feeling is back again, but it's amplified by my now rough tactile sense; it's rather "pleasurable." It's still a really odd feeling, but at least it's not bad.

"Can you feel this?" Alissa asks.

I nod and answer, "Yeah. It feels good, but it's still not the same level as having the real thing, I think."

- Hana and Roxanne request something very specific from Wolf -

I grin and say, "Maybe… to both of you. I just got the skill and I feel like there's a whole new area that I can explore. It'll take some time, but I'll definitely fulfill all of your fetishes."

"You know you can use this in combat, too, right?" Lina asks and we stop for a second. "Having a third hand to use another weapon, or to help you move around, or to grapple others with more strength. The more you can change yourself, the more unpredictable you can become."

I smile wryly and look at the other girls. "O-of course I thought of that."

Lina raises an eyebrow, not impressed. My horns and tail turning blue and amorphous again doesn't help me look more confident.

We watch the sky turn orange and slowly set down behind us. I play around with my tail and try to cast [Regeneration] on the golems while maintaining my appendages.

I don't really feel that different by having them. I feel like there's something foreign and distracting taped to my body. I need to look at Roxanne's appendages again because apparently, the area where the solidified mana and real skin join is different from the rest.

I get an idea and try to manipulate a part of my soul to be entirely composed of the "signal" that travels along Roxanne's tail when she's touched.

After some mental effort that makes me look like I'm shitting my pants, I manage to force a part of my soul to be like that. I instantly feel a spike of pleasure that's so high that it turns into blinding pain.

"ARGH!" I yell in pain, then I grab my tail and the pressure seems to lessen the pain.

"Wolfy?!" Alissa rushes to me, looking very worried. "I felt that."

"Sorry. I tried something that ended up being a stupid idea."

"I wouldn't say that's a first," she says with an annoyed pout.

"Sorry…" I mutter and look away in shame.

I relax a little and reform my (currently blue and immaterial) horns. This time, I make them big and thick, just like Hellboy's.

I can totally use them like -…

I chuckle lightly and continue using [Regeneration] on the golems.

Alissa explains my mistake to Hana and Aoi, then she goes back inside the tent.

Lina drags her chair closer to mine and sits beside me. I grab her hand and give it a squeeze.

"This view is beautiful," she says.

"Beautiful?" Ted asks.

"What is beauty?" Suzy asks.

Lina frowns, making her gloomy face look even gloomier. "I don't know," she answers.

"Patterns that cause pleasure signals to be sent to our brains," I answer in her stead.

"That's not wrong, but… I think it's missing something."

"Okay, a deeper explanation, then. There are logical patterns that make something beautiful. Like how a perfect fruit looks 'good' and a rotten fruit looks 'bad' because the first is edible and the latter is not. This way, we have an instinctual understanding of which fruits are for consumption and which aren't.

"Other patterns, like beauty, don't have such a clear-cut logic behind it. Its purpose might be that it makes us prefer the average-looking person so that we feel more incentive in procreating with the people around us.

"But then again, Ciel's foot fetish has like, zero logical reasons for existing."

"Hey!" A voice comes from inside the tent.

"So, I'd say that it's all a mix of pleasure, patterns, and a dash of chaos. Certain patterns give us pleasure, but not just a perfect, specific pattern. The 'patterns' need small changes in them. Small enough that they don't change the overall 'shape' of the 'pattern,' and also not so big that they are perceptible."

Lina blinks blankly at me while her brain processes it. "Just like the Tale of Creation," she finally says.

Ciel comes out and sits beside Lina. "Yes. Since it's coming from you, that's way too familiar" she says.

"Maybe some things are universal," I say with a shrug.

Ciel chuckles once and shakes her head. "It's just a coincidence. We are looking too deep into it."

I smile wryly and go quiet.

Before it's fully dark outside, we return to the inn and go back to our room. Then we call the maids again and soon we hear numerous footsteps approaching us.

They knock and Alissa allows them in. Aside from Daiana and Suelen, there's three other lolis following them.

Daiana smiles, though I do notice it's a little strained. "Good news… Mr. Wolf. You're becoming quite popular around here," she says.