Moonlight Assassin: A LitRPG Space Fantasy, page 59
“No, someone else.”
“We just started. I’m not that premature—”
Synaria rolled away from Guy, leaving him on his knees and his wet penis pointed at the wall. She leaped off the bed like a frightened rabbit, then hid on the floor. Something wasn’t right, so Guy peered at the chamber’s door.
The handle turned. Someone was indeed coming.
Xanthe returned unexpectedly, taking slow and wobbly steps to the bed, her left hand clenching a bottle of booze. She was slow enough that she hadn’t noticed how fast Guy dove back and yanked the blanket over his body, covering his hard cock from sight.
“Er, um. Back already, Xanthe?” he asked.
“The girls had enough to drink.” Xanthe joined Guy in bed and offered him the bottle. “You have not.”
“Eh, maybe later.”
“But, darling, you said that earlier.” Xanthe placed the glass in his hands. “Now is later.”
She wasn’t taking no for an answer. To humor Xanthe, Guy put the bottle to his mouth and took a small swig of it. Xanthe took the bottle off his hands and downed a big gulp. As she drank, he looked to the side and spotted Synaria crawling to her panties and top on the floor, her pale ass facing Guy. She collected them, then stared up at Guy and Xanthe, wincing. Then she ducked fast when Xanthe finished drinking and placed the bottle on the nightstand.
Xanthe crawled to Guy across the bed on all fours, beaming a drunken stare at him. She tugged down the top of her evening gown with one finger, exposing her left breast that jiggled free and dangled above Guy’s face. She stopped and grimaced.
“Strange,” Xanthe snorted.
Guy raised his eyebrow, hoping she hadn’t noticed the sweat dampening his forehead. “What is it?”
“I cannot process pheromones well,” she said. “Wow, I must be really drunk, huh?”
“Can’t sense them at all?”
“No idea if you are aroused or not . . .” Xanthe kissed Guy, yanking his worried mind away from Synaria. She kissed him three times more and ran her hands through his hair before reaching back and ripping the bed’s blanket off Guy. His penis pointed to the ceiling was the first thing Xanthe’s green eyes locked on to. She beamed with an intoxicated grin. “. . . according to this, you are!”
Somewhere on the floor next to the bed was Synaria, naked and hiding. So Guy had hoped because if Xanthe found a nude bunny-eared druid hiding—
And before Guy knew it, Xanthe got naked like a pro.
She sat on her knees with raven wings spread and reached for his hardness. Xanthe stroked him up and down and mentioned nothing about why her pleasuring hand had become damp. Guy hoped she was too drunk to realize that Synaria’s vagina had made his dick wet.
Fearing for Synaria, Guy kissed Xanthe and lowered her backward to the bed, away from the side that Synaria had dashed to. If he were on top and positioned himself right, Xanthe would only see Guy’s pecs as he pounded her. As long as Guy fucked Xanthe hard, her orgasm would keep her eyes shut and facing the ceiling. If Synaria was smart, she’d leave while Guy did that.
He slipped his cock into Xanthe, deeply penetrating her. She moaned, let her wings spread across the bed, and faced Guy. The harder Guy thrust, the deeper into his eyes she peered. The bed squeaked with each ram. Guy was confident it was going to break, but if that was what it would take to keep her focus on him, so be it. He wasn’t sure if Synaria had left. All he could hear was his deep breathing, Xanthe squealing, and the bed squeaking. The corner of his eye revealed what happened. Synaria was crawling on the floor before the bed. Rather than leaving, Synaria stood up, slipped her legs into her panties, and pulled them up, obscuring her platinum pussy hair. Synaria put on her shirt, pouted, and looked at Guy impaling Xanthe, her bunny ears sagging.
Guy peeped to the side, faced Synaria, and shook his head. She needed to leave. Synaria didn’t and just gazed at his fast-moving cock pumping Xanthe’s warm and wet hole. Synaria opened her eyes in horror when Xanthe squirted Guy’s stomach muscles.
“I never told you this, darling, but . . .” Xanthe touched her wet pussy, caressing it leisurely. “You are the only man who could make me do that.”
“And why is that!?” That was Synaria, yelling and breaking her cover. The bunny druid pointed ahead while Xanthe and Guy looked at her in shock. “How the hell did you squirt like that?!” It turned out that Synaria had pointed at the bedsheets Xanthe had soaked with her orgasm.
“What the fuck?” Xanthe bolted out of bed, slipped into her gown, then snarled at Synaria, pointing her left index finger at her. “Did you get lost on your way to your chamber, druid?”
Synaria’s bunny ears stood up on edge, her balled-up fists ready for a scrap. “I am exactly where I should be!”
“With my husband?”
Synaria pointed her finger back at Xanthe. “He is not your husband, and you know that!”
“How dare you raise a finger at me!”
Fuck. Guy rolled out of bed. “Okay, ladies—”
Xanthe swatted Synaria’s finger away. She gasped and growled.
“Sooner or later, Xanthe,” Synaria snarled. “Your people are going to learn that you lied!”
“I shall be back on the Seraphim when that happens.”
“Not if I tell them!”
“Oh, don’t you dare! What has gotten into you, Syn? Does the bunny need another carrot?”
“The Paladin had fed me his carrot plenty of times.”
A gasp.
Guy waved his hands at the two in a pleading manner. “You two want to keep it down before—”
They spun to Guy, both pointing fingers at him. “You stay out of this!” Synaria and Xanthe shouted at once. They looked surprised, then faced each other. “Do not yell at him!” They spoke in unison again. “Only I may do that!”
Xanthe and Synaria bickered on and on, eventually getting into a small fight, tearing their garments from each other. Two sets of bare breasts flopped about as they wrestled, clawed, and bit each other. Synaria was indeed an ankle biter.
Thank God for HP and defense stats. Neither of the two drew blood despite the blows their fists exchanged.
As interesting as it was to see two half-naked women fight and inadvertently strip each other nude as fast as they got dressed, all for mating rights over Guy, he felt the need to slip out of the room and leave them be.
Guy put on some pants and a shirt and got the fuck out the door.
Behind, Xanthe held Synaria in a headlock while Synaria grabbed the ends of Xanthe’s black hair and pulled.
Chapter Seventy-Five
Guy awoke the next day. He ended up crashing at one of the inns in Inara and kept it a secret from Synaria and Xanthe so they wouldn’t follow him. His body thanked him for it because he was able to get back-to-back hours of uninterrupted sleep. He left the inn and stepped into Inara’s streets, soon to become a sweltering place once the sun finished rising, then returned to the pleasure temple.
Rain standing ahead of the temple’s entrance stopped him. She beamed happily at Guy as he approached. “Oh, I thought you were still asleep.”
“Just woke up,” Guy said. “Figured you’d be sleeping . . . or hungover.”
“I wanted to study the sentinel data, you know, that same device that presented the hologram map to you?”
“Why’s that?”
“I just . . .” Rain shrugged. “I think I might know how to operate it and access other functions.”
“How?”
“I can’t explain it. It just came to my head as I slept.”
More and more, Guy believed that Rain’s transformation from fae to ethereal was more than just looks and genetics. The corruption was re-writing her mind to think more like a star-dweller than a land-dweller, similar to how Guy using an Assassin subclass re-wired his brain to think more like a silent killer. Rain was inheriting lost knowledge of the ethereal race . . . knowledge that pertained to sentinel tech. Guy didn’t object to Rain visiting the Western Yelrokas Fortress. In fact, he insisted on going with her.
Rain issued Guy a party invitation. He noticed a third among them when he looked at the screen.
“Nijana’s coming?”
“Yeah, she was the only one awake, so I asked her to come with me, just in case I ran into trouble. But with you here that will make this even easier!”
Guy, Rain, and Nijana flew to the Western Yelrokas Fortress rather than walking toward it. The three stopped periodically to give their wings a break, recover flight time, and let Guy catch up with them, being the slowest flyer of the three. It took a while to fly across the dunes, odd palm trees, and desert oasis, but the three eventually flew into the astral fortress.
Rain’s crystalline wings faded as she landed, then she strode ahead. She didn’t need an escort or to follow a map into the fortress’s central operational chamber. Despite only being in the fortress once, Rain knew where it was. Guy opted to not say anything. He and Nijana followed behind Rain, watching and observing what the ethereal did. Rain walked to the podium-like device in the middle of the room, gave its screen a two-second look, and danced her fingers across its holographic interface. She reminded Guy of Meridtila, especially when Rain conjured hologram screens and pushed them about the room to study the lines of words written in the alien language.
“Rain,” Nijana said, ambling closer. “You know how to read their language too?”
“Not exactly,” Rain said. “But I heard Rachael used her perception to identify a few of the markers. Since my wisdom is at 127, I figured I could do the same. That and I already know how to access certain functions.”
“How?” Nijana asked.
A shrug. “Came to me last night. I guess that wine had something special in it.”
Guy stood to Rain’s left. “Find anything interesting?”
“You bet.” She pushed on a hologram button. “This.” Rain accessed a projection displaying a map of the desert. She enlarged the hologram and scrolled toward Inara’s location on it, shifted it to the north, then zoomed in on an icon. “I found another point of interest. And get this. The sentinels didn’t add it to their database. The imperials had placed this marker.”
Nijana crossed her arms and eyed the location on the map closer. “I recognize that place. Xanthe and I were there. The imperials had several tents in the sand.”
“What were they doing there?” Guy asked her.
“Using it as a storage camp for soul crystals, mostly druid ones. The girls from Inara raid it repeatedly and use the crystals as fodder to operate the Administrator’s Debug screen.”
“It must be where the imperials keep the crystals harvested from the druids.” Guy eyed it closer. “Why just leave it there? Are they intentionally doing it for the shadow angels to get their hands on it?”
“No,” Nijana said quickly. “They almost got killed when imperial patrols caught them in the act. Fuck, Xanthe and I barely escaped with our lives. However, I want to know why the empire doesn’t harvest the shadow angels for crystals? Is that not the empire’s goal? Amassing enormous sums of soul crystals from anyone?”
“Seems so, even other fae,” Guy said. “Rachael and I still can’t scrub the horror we saw at Muruai.”
Rain looked aside at the mention of the town of Muruai, her home city razed to the ground by imperial forces. She couldn’t hide the sadness moistening her eyes.
“The empire does attack shadow angels though, like the ones in Inara,” Guy said.
“Yeah, the empire only attacks Inara shadow angels,” Nijana said. “They leave the rest alone, from what I heard.”
“Because of the sacred water,” Guy concluded.
“Right,” Rain said, casting away the sadness from her face. “The druids need it. It gives fire resistance to anyone, anything it touches.”
“That includes trees,” Guy added. “The empire is making the druids do the harvesting for them. The empire gets soul crystals without having to work for them and rewards the druids with the sacred water. The problem is that the empire doesn’t have it, the Inara girls do, and they fight furiously to keep it out of imperial hands.”
Nijana raised a red eyebrow. “And so the imperials attack Inara repeatedly to steal it from them to pay the druids. Though that still doesn’t explain why they’re storing druid crystals at that camp in the desert and not in their fortresses.”
“Or why they brought the druid crystals from Ellyllon to Penna in the first place,” Rain said.
More Desert Jewels
Objective: Wait until the afternoon and investigate the soul crystal camp.
Issued by: White Dragon
Reward: 20500 Experience Points, 1500 Lira
Accept quest? Yes/No
Guy and the surrounding ladies accepted the quest.
“Let’s take a look and find out later this afternoon as per this quest,” Guy said, facing the holographic map of the region. “Now that we captured this fortress and killed the imperials, fewer troopers should be guarding those tents.”
Rain shook her head. “No, Guy, we must go now before it’s too late.” She moved ahead and accessed her Quest screen. “We might be too late if we delay.”
“Well, the White Dragon disagrees . . .”
More Desert Jewels – Quest Updated
Go now rather than wait before it’s too late.
Guy raised his eyebrow. “The fuck . . .”
“Rain,” Nijana said, taking slow steps toward her. “Did you just force the White Dragon to change the quest parameters . . . for you?”
“I actually had no idea that would work . . .” Rain shut the screen off. “Well, it would seem the White Dragon has spoken. We must depart ASAP!”
Guy pulled out his hand terminal, snapped a photo of the holographic map, then used it to chart a path from the Western Yelrokas Fortress to the soul crystal camp in the middle of the desert. The three double checked their inventories, ensuring they had enough survival water, food, and drinks on hand in case they ran into trouble. Once finished, Guy, Rain, and Nijana spun to leave.
And stopped when a plume of smoke blocked their path. The smoke faded to unveil the sight of Sayuri dressed in a red kunoichi’s garb, standing before the chamber’s exit, arms crossed, and black eyebrow raised inquisitively.
“Going somewhere, Nijana?” Sayuri asked.
Nijana slowly reached for the Marauder’s Chakram. “Hey, you promised.”
“Of course, I would never dream of breaking it.” Sayuri leaned against the door frame. “And this fortress that the shadow angel Matriarch controls? I would imagine her rules now extend to it. Somewhat.”
“Well, good to see you’re still alive, Sayuri,” Guy said. “Rain, invite her, will you?”
“I did.”
He looked at the Soul Hunter. “Sayuri?”
“I prefer to operate solo,” she replied calmly.
Sayuri threw a Smoke Bomb to the ground, and it exploded, spewing up black smoke. The last thing Guy saw was Sayuri’s smile before she faded within the smoke. Somewhere behind was Sayuri keeping pace with Guy, Rain, and Nijana. She wanted to join them but not be in the party. It’d be a perfect opportunity for Sayuri to attack Nijana, since the game rules would allow it. Being in a party prevented friendly fire, accidental or otherwise.
Guy kept close to Nijana and held her lower back as they strode through the fortress’s corridors on their way out and into the desert.
Chapter Seventy-Six
Guy, Rain, and Nijana approached a cluster of tents half-buried in the Yelrokas Desert sands, hours earlier than they originally planned. They had to walk to it, as flying would result in them leaving Sayuri behind. And walking only made Nijana an easier target for the Soul Hunter, though nothing happened during their multiple-hour voyage, just sandstorms and the heat that was cooking their skin. They were breaking the first rule of traveling through the Yelrokas Desert, walking across it during the day, but Rain insisted on going while the sun was still high and somehow got the White Dragon to agree with her.
He still couldn’t believe that she had done that. Rain got the White Dragon to change one of its quest objectives to suit her, and she never explained why. Why was it so crucial that Guy and the party explore the tents set up by the empire, where they had deposited hundreds of land-druid soul crystals? Why was it important that they did it now and not in the afternoon, as initially instructed by the White Dragon? The best Guy could come up with was that whatever it was that put the knowledge of using sentinel tech into Rain’s head, also put a hidden message into her mind suggesting that something important was going to happen at the camp, and if they waited until sundown, they’d be too late. Rain getting the quest changed must have been a result of the White Dragon realizing it made a mistake. So Guy had hoped. If not, then she just forced the quest to go her way against the White Dragon’s original wishes.
That meant Rain was leading them into trouble that they could have avoided—
“Get down!”
That was Sayuri screaming. Guy felt his stomach flip and his chest do things that could lead to a heart attack. The party turned away from the tents in the desert, facing the area they suspected Sayuri to be. She was still invisible.
“I said, get down, you three!” Sayuri yelled again. “I see movement.”
Rain and Nijana lowered themselves to the sand. Guy used Stealth and faded within a flash of light particles. He moved away from the dune and looked closer at the tents, spotting three imperial faes lying face down in the sand. Their HP was at zero.
Sayuri was right. He crept closer to get a better look, stepping over severed legs, halved torsos turning the sand into red mud and shredded fae wings. The sight didn’t disgust him, and he had his subclass to thank for that. Guy hesitated to move closer to the camp littered with dead imperials, searching for what ended them. It wasn’t the work of the shadow angels; they had a little more class than that. It looked like a monster had killed the troopers, but when Guy last checked the desert was primarily full of oversized scorpions. There was no way those creatures could have killed and torn apart the men he stepped over. Half of him wanted to seek that threat before it attacked the girls, and half of him wanted to return to the girls out of fear Sayuri would betray them. It was not like he could see where Sayuri was.
