Thanks to Ene’s knowledge of Ternia’s geography, she was easily able to plot out a course for us the moment she found out where we were going. Add into how she let me use the colpsible spygss she used to use during her travels, then we were golden.

  We were headed a little over one-hundred miles due east of Amoranth. This fact not only impressed upon me that the guild’s reach was wild, but that other guilds were actually few and far between. Villeverdure’s request for aid must have been sent weeks ago, only to wind up left alone and unaccepted on the quest board for another week before we found it. I could only imagine the sorts of troubles the people there had to endure during the wait.

  Not that the thought of enduring anything at all was a mindset certain members of our party agreed to.

  “Haa… Haa… Haa… Oh, Gods!”

  Ene absentmindedly wiped the drool from her chin as she bent forward, jutting her bare ass into my face. Her breastpte was askew, her long blonde hair had become a mess and her pants had been dropped to the ground along with her thong, both of which were still carelessly wrapped around only one of her ankles. White hot magma dripped from the same pce that coated her plump thighs with her arousal.

  Feeling a little ashamed of the amount of force it took just to take my eyes off the mess she’d made me make of her, I quietly fixed my belt back into pce. As an outsider unable to see it, you’d never have known that the reason why she looked like this rested solely in the fact that she was making doe eyes at my map window.

  As she swiped a finger across the window to check on our progress, several breaths escaped her lips in little heated puffs of smoke. Even though the day was pleasantly warm and the sun above was shining bright.

  “Ene,” I started, pressing a hand to her shoulder. “You need to stop getting so worked up looking at the map.”

  “How can I?!” she shouted, turning the seedy grin of a pervert to me as she pointed to the map window. “Your map moves and fills with more and more color every time we teleport! It’s so goddamn sexy!!”

  Gushing, she pressed her hands to her cheeks, completely unconcerned with how she’d left her lower half exposed. The trail of white running down her inner thigh reached her knee.

  I sighed, considering leaving her like this as a punishment before ultimately casting a cleaning spell on her anyways.

  Our destination started off over a hundred miles away and, thanks to the route she pnned and to my Dimensional Step spell, we were making record time. So much so that we didn't even need a cart. But every time she looked at the updated map, she’d get… well, wet.

  And, finally unable to bear it any longer, she pulled us aside for a quick round of fun. And by “pulled us aside,” I mean she discreetly rerouted our path without telling us to take a quick break beside a mountain that was a short two-Dimensional-Steps away from our main path.

  She said this was to keep with my want for the girls not to be seen in such compromising states, but the fact that she had stumbled all over herself as she yanked her pants down spoke volumes on how this pitstop was most certainly not part of her original pn.

  Still, it was thanks to her that my map menu was slowly being filled in as she helped me rediscover nds she’d already discovered years ago herself. Thanks to our guild work, we’d filled in a great deal of my map in and around Amoranth, but this was our first time traveling so far.

  Where my map of the world had once been almost completely bck, it now held a strong line of color and detail connecting Amoranth to where we veered off to make this pitstop.

  Needless to say, this trail was not in the least bit sexy – the line our route drew wasn’t even phallic in nature – but Ene alone saw something else in it.

  “Ene…,” Yua said, exasperated as she sat beneath the shade of a tree. “Do I really need to remind you that we were sent to help people? We don’t have time for this.”

  With her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands, Yua had been keeping watch both on and for us, but the slight twitch to her ears suggested she was still upset about Ene stripping down outside. Or in other words, in this semi-public pce. The same sort of pce that was not our home and somewhere where men other than me might see her, therefore breaking one of the few orders I gave to the girls.

  Not that it really mattered, honestly. Even I could tell we were completely alone out here. We did have to skirt around a small hamlet on our way to avoid my magic being seen, but it was miles and miles behind us by now.

  “Stop being such a stickler for Husband’s orders,” Ene grumbled, finally looking away from the map long enough to pull her thong back up. “Besides, Kitty clearly needed a break.”

  Stopping with her pants only half-way up her legs, Ene pointed to Mana, who was ying on the ground between Yua’s legs, resting the back of her head on her Big Sis’s crotch, of all pces. Her tiny chest heaved with a bored breath that I actually almost bought as honest.

  “Big Bro,” she started, forcing a sob. “Can’t I take this metal chest off? It’s too heavy. And we’ve been walking for hours!”

  “No,” Yua said ftly. “You need to train your body more. You should be able to handle this easily.”

  Easily was an understatement. While I did make her breastpte extra thick, it still only weighed, at worst, about five pounds. And while she looked like and in some ways was a frail little girl, she was actually a beast-kin and had a beast-kin’s strength.

  I specifically designed the pte to cover as much skin as I could without it getting in her way and without slowing her down, all while offering as much protection as reasonably possible for the pte’s size. So, in other words, she was full of shit.

  “She’s right, Mana. And as for you…”

  I turned to Ene, who had barely finished redressing herself by hanging her axe on her back. We were officially on mission now, so I’d pulled the girl’s weapons out of my item box so they could be at the ready if we ran into any trouble on the way. Unfortunately, this only added further compints to Mana’s arsenal, but she’d have to get used to carrying her bow and quiver long distances as well.

  “Your punishment for this dey is carrying Mana for the rest of the trip.”

  “… I accept my punishment without compint. My humblest apologies for the dey.”

  “Good. And, Mana?”

  “Eep!”

  Suddenly showing some strength once my tone hit her, she shot up and wrapped Yua’s arms defensively around her petite frame.

  “Your punishment is letting yourself be carried by Ene. Now, break’s over, let’s get going.”

  “Eh? No fair! You’re the one who stopped to mate with Booby-Lady! Why aren’t you being punished too?!”

  “He was just being a good mate and dealing with my desires. Right, Kitty?”

  “Hmph!”

  Ene easily brushed Yua’s arms out of the way, not that she tried to resist, and scooped Mana up into a princess carry. Smooshing her cheek against Mana’s with a messy smirk, she didn’t look the least bit troubled by the extra weight of the girl and her bow.

  Mana pouted quietly, ears ft on her head, save for where one pressed itself straight against Ene’s face. She was visibly stuck between the want to compin and the satisfaction of getting off her feet for a while.

  I opened a portal back to where we left off and offered Yua a hand up. She eyed it for a moment before sighing and accepting my help.

  “You should have just used Instant Orgasm on her instead of stopping.”

  “Come on, Yua,” Ene said, her tone almost chiding. “That would have only tired me out. And Kitty’s been compining about her feet hurting for at least half an hour now. It’s fine to take a break every once in a while.”

  “Not when we’re almost there…”

  Carrying on the conversation as we passed through the portal, I couldn’t help but admit Yua was right. Reconfirming our location on the map now that Ene wasn’t slobbering all over it, we were at most ten to fifteen more jumps away from our destination. And, while that distance covered upwards of several dozens of miles, it would only take a few more minutes to accomplish.

  “Haha… Maybe you two should have just powered through,” I ughed.

  “Tch… See how quickly he sides with Yua, Kitty?”

  “Big Bro is a betrayer, after all,” Mana agreed, shoving Ene’s face away from hers.

  I rolled my eyes, ignored Yua’s swishing tail and peered through the spygss towards our next destination. Having travelled with someone using magic simir to mine before, Ene had the forethought to pn out a route with plenty of mostly-empty terrain, so I was able to see quite far.

  After a moment to memorize the distant ndmark, I opened another portal.

  “You know, Husband, not having to stop so you can suck down a mana potion after every other spell makes traveling a breeze.”

  “Is that what you used to do?”

  “Unfortunately,” she sighed, but her face was full of contentment. “Wish we could have met sooner. Traveling would have been so much more exciting. There’s so many things I’ve seen that I know you would have loved. Like, there’s a city far, far to the North that rests above an underground ke where spirits keep the water permanently hot. Thanks to this, there’s a bathhouse on almost every corner. And get this, mixed bathing there is more or less customary for nobles and commoners alike.”

  “Why is that the first pce you’d want to take me?”

  “Duh! Because the wine there is amazing! It has the perfect mixture of sweet and bitter. And most importantly, it’s as potent a drink as whiskey.”

  “How was I supposed to know that? Nothing about what you said had anything to do with alcohol. And does it even count as wine at that point?”

  “They say it does. Gods, if I could have shared a drink with you there.”

  Enjoying the soft smile she wore as she reminisced about the pce, and hoping that the mixture of baths and alcohol was handled responsibly there, I opened another portal.

  Bored of the conversation already, Mana leaned on Ene’s chest, felt the hard steel of the woman’s breastpte on her cheek and opted to tilt her head back over her arm instead. Yua, however, put a knuckle to her chin in thought as we walked.

  “Um, Ene… If he was with you back then, wouldn’t you have travelled the world even faster than you already did? That means the fun you had would have ended sooner, too, right?”

  “… Yua, you’re already his first wife. Don’t be selfish and ruin my fantasies about him.”

  “Eh?”

  I ughed, celebrating our most recent trip through a portal with another rousing round of summoning a portal.

  We continued to chat here and there as we walked, but as expected, we came up upon our destination far too quickly to really get into the finer details of life and of getting drunk in the bathtub.

  Once we arrived at the top of a rge grassy hill overlooking Villeverdure, the air grew cooler with each passing moment, carrying on it the rustic scent of the countryside. The trip that should have taken days was over in a matter of hours, and there was still plenty of daylight left for us.

  Despite this happy news, however, Ene’s pyful smile vanished at the sight of the settlement resting before us. The look that repced it almost made it seem as though she was about to pull out her axe. But she didn’t. Instead, her arms fell to her sides, sck as if suddenly numbed. She nearly dropped Mana on her ass, but the nimble girl managed to nd on her feet.

  Knitting her brow, Ene focused her cobalt gaze on Villeverdure. The rows and rows of stone buildings and the thatched roofs of houses that stretched out in front of us like a vast, blossoming flower attempting to reach out and touch the horizon on one side. On the other was an expanse of farmnd almost twice as rge and whose cinnamon-colored stocks of wheat bent and swayed comfortably in the breeze.

  The sun cast a warm, golden light on the thickly-sturdy walls surrounding all this. While these walls were not even a quarter the height of Amoranth’s, the gates were opened for the masses to come and go as they pleased.

  “What in the hells…?”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, following her gaze.

  All I could see were maybe a couple hundred people both in the fields harvesting the wheat and walking the streets, visiting shops, restaurants, attending the big church in the center of it all and other such daily occurrences. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought we were looking at a portion of Amoranth, not Villeverdure.

  For a pce that was supposedly being hassled by bandits, it was surprisingly calm. The air around the pce was quiet, but not the sort of foreboding silence one would expect before facing the sorts of danger we’d come for. It was peaceful.

  “Are you seeing something I’m not?”

  “Maybe it’s because the pce looks so healthy?” Yua said, her ears flicking. “Bandits aren’t exactly known to leave the pces they pilge how they found it.”

  “Maybe someone already took care of the bandits? I wonder if this means I’ll lose my quest deposit.”

  “Shut up and let me see the map,” Ene barked without tearing her gaze from Villeverdure.

  Confused, I did as she asked and opened my menu for her. She all but threw herself before it, as usual, but her expression was worryingly serious.

  She quickly honed in on the icon representing Villeverdure, then scrolled, following the trail of color that led us to this point. When she found the spot where we’d taken our pitstop, the arch in her brow deepened and she quickly returned the map to where it started. She then scrolled upwards to find the ndmass she’d pointed out as Dragma weeks ago before comparing its location to Villeverdure’s. Finally, she pinched and spread her fingers to zoom in, but the city itself was still bnk, no doubt because we haven’t actually been inside it yet.

  Understandable as I found this, Ene scowled.

  “This makes no sense…”

  “You gonna let us in on what has you so troubled?”

  “I told you, didn’t I? Last time I was here, this pce was just a little farming vilge. It was a speck on the map that might as well have been a mispced drop of ink that fell from my quill as I charted the area around it. At best, it had twenty houses and less than half the farmnd. Now look at it!”

  She threw her hands up at the city, as if we somehow hadn’t seen it.

  “Well, you haven’t visited in years, right? They clearly expanded a little.”

  Ene cocked her head, on the verge of agreeing with the reality before her, but she swiftly denied the notion.

  “I don’t think so. It hasn’t been that long. There’s no way the Villeverdure I remember could have expanded this much, this fast.”

  “Is that a problem, though? If they’ve expanded, that means the people here are doing well.”

  At least, it lends some understanding to how they were able to put up the lofty quest reward.

  “Maybe, but it used to be the sort of pce where you’d see people trading a goat for a few chickens. Not… this.”

  Apparently unconcerned with the conversation, Mana plopped down on the grass and lifted the front curtain of her skirt to fan herself with it. I thought to stop her undylike behavior now that we were close to civilization, but with Ene unable to take her gaze off the sprawling mass of humanity before us, I felt my concerns were needed elsewhere.

  “Are you sure you’re remembering the right vilge?” Yua asked. “You’ve been to a lot of pces, right? Maybe you’re just confused.”

  “I don’t know about that… When it comes to maps, I feel like my memory is even better than Husband’s.”

  “And like you said, it’s a mispced drop of ink. I’m sure the guild scouts would have said something if they found this pce odd, right?”

  “They probably just have a really effective leader,” I concluded and Yua smiled proudly, likely thinking of the very leader that was her father as an example.

  Ene, though, was visibly unsure. She scratched her head, unable to deny the reality in front of her.

  “Maybe it’s just been longer than I thought. But it still doesn’t feel right.”

  “Why don’t we just head down there and look around?” I said, threading my fingers between hers. “Maybe we can add figuring out how the vilge expanded to our quest. If anything, to ease your mind.”

  Ene smirked at me, as if sensing some ulterior motive that I most assuredly didn’t have.

  “Hoho? Someone’s eager to get to killing bandits.”

  I shook my head. “The city’s clearly bigger than we thought. Finding the bandits is likely going to be harder than I expected now.”

  Although, unlike other Adventurers, I did have the benefit of being able to see people’s info boxes at will, and from a distance to boot. So, while the number of people I’d have to scan increased, it was still going to be as easy as looking to see if they had the Bandit tag by their name.

  Still…

  “I’d rather get this over with as soon as possible.”

  While this hill looked like a nice pce for a picnic, we weren’t here for fun or sightseeing. We were here to complete a quest, as we had a dozen times before – grisly as this particur one was likely going to be.

  More importantly, the longer we take to find and deal with the bandits, the more I worry that my earthly morals would eat away at me. I don’t want to end up choking at the wrong moment like I did back when we fought Tillmann. But unlike then, I’m properly prepared this time.

  Loathed as I am to admit it after deciding this course for us myself, that little pit stop we took was just as much for me as it was for the girls. Thanks to it, my heart was steady again and my mind clear.

  However, I had to wonder if the girls noticed my worries, but when I found Mana yanking off her boots to rub her feet, I doubted it.

  “Mmnn… Big Sis, can you heal my feet?”

  With a chiding sort of annoyance on her face, Yua drew in a breath, but did as she was asked. She shoved her hand under Mana’s small breastpte and down the front of her top to make direct contact with her skin and incanted her Healing Punch. Soon, the space between them glowed green.

  “… How is it that you can py in the forest all day, but just a few hours of walking tires you out?”

  “It’s these…”

  “And don’t say it’s the clothes or armor.”

  “…”

  Turning her compints into a big, soothed smile, Mana decided not to answer. Instead, she just let Yua do her thing until she was able to stand again. Shaking her head, Yua helped Mana back into her boots.

  Taking the quickest path down the hill, we made our way to the main road on foot. The city gate wasn’t far, but it was close enough for the guards stationed there to see my magic. So, our time freely teleporting around was done for now.

  “Well, Ene,” I said, squeezing her hand. “You’re the most experienced of us here where it comes to this sort of quest. What do you think we should do first?”

  I’d wanted to pull her attention off the city for a moment, but for some reason, that question perked her right back up. And when she answered, she did so enthusiastically.

  “Easy. We need to find a tavern.”

  I stopped in my tracks right as my boot trampled the well-traveled road. While the driver of the cart in front of us nodded, likely thinking I was giving him a chance to head into the city first, he was the least of my concern.

  “Ene… I’m not about to let you get drunk while we’re on a quest.

  While she was more an alcohol enthusiast than a drunkard, she had been drunk the morning when we first met. And after years of using this hobby of hers to drink her worries away until she became somewhat of an alcoholic, she, by her own request, asked me to use my rights as her master to force her to ease up on the drink. So, I kept all her booze in my item box and rationed it out to her both so it didn’t become a problem and so she could enjoy herself when the time was right.

  And so far, she’d been doing well having only a gss or two at dinner without compint. I wasn’t about to let her break that streak.

  “Oh please,” she said, waving me off. “I’m not pnning on drinking that much. Though we will need to drink a little to blend in.”

  “Blend in? Why would we need to blend in at a tavern?”

  “Hoho? Husband, I believe it’s about time for you to learn your next lesson about being an Adventurer.”

  “I’m listening…”

  She let go of my hand to point a finger at my face. The smile she wore was full of a confidence that I couldn’t be sure wasn’t at least a little tinged with thirst.

  “Information gathering is one of our duties as Adventurers, and taverns are the easiest pce to learn the local gossip. See, when bandits shore up in a city, the people living there are usually too scared to talk. Since, you know, the bandits might find out they squealed and kill them. However, most people can’t keep their mouths shut once they start drinking.”

  “So you want us to gather information from a bunch of drunks…?”

  “Yup!” she excimed with a thumbs-up. “But don’t worry. I’ll be able to tell who’s too sloshed to give any accurate details. Besides, all we really need is details on where the bandits are hiding. Oh, and on what happened to this vilge.”

  Wary, I considered this. The guild’s scouts apparently didn’t learn the bandit’s exact location, just their numbers and assumed fighting potential. So, obviously we need to learn more, but listening to a drunken idiot ramble on about this and that was not what I was expecting.

  “Shouldn’t we find the woman that requested help first? She’s probably the one that knows the most.”

  I said as much, but with all we have on her being the name Lucielle Evans, she’d be just as hard to find. Though, the fact that she actually had a surname did at least provide an idea of where to look.

  “We could,” Ene said. “But experience tells me the tavern is our best option. Second would be an alehouse, then an inn. But only if the inn has a dining area.”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “Because people would think we’re weird if we start knocking on their rooms unprompted. In the middle of the night. When they might be alone and willing to talk.”

  “Why are you saying that like you’ve done that before?”

  Cheeks reddening a little, Ene huffed. “Hey, all Adventurers make mistakes when they’re starting out. Just be lucky you have my experience to lean on.”

  “And if that’s not enough for you,” she continued, cpping a hand on Yua’s shoulder. “Kitty and Yua here will be able to hear conversations happening on the other side of the room. We can listen in all we want without looking too suspicious!”

  As she proudly procimed the brilliance of her own idea, I looked over my shoulder down the road to see if anyone heard the pn before we could implement it. Thankfully, this pce wasn’t as popur as Amoranth, so there was a long lull in the traffic headed towards the gate.

  “I think it’s a fine idea,” Yua agreed, ears flicking and ready for action. “It’s not like you haven’t used my ears like this before.”

  Ene crossed her arms under her bosom and nodded. “Exactly. I didn’t have any beast-kin with ears like yours back when I was taking quests myself, but I know it would have made life easier. We can look for the quest giver after.”

  Apparently on board with Ene’s pn, Yua looked to Mana for her input as one of the owners of one of the two sets of ears we were expecting to help. In turn, she let her head, shoulders and even her tail droop lifelessly.

  “Mmnn… Why do we keep having to go to pces that serve that smelly water?”

  “Hoho? No worries, Kitty. We’ll get a drink in you and you’ll be loving how it makes you feel. Same as Husband did.”

  “Ew. No way.”

  While Ene was exaggerating my take on booze a fair bit, she wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t about to just let my wife drink alone all the time. That’d just be sad. So, I did join her with a gss from time to time. And some of these times, when we were having fun, we would end up sharing more than just a few gsses. Though, this usually led to me dragging her or one of the other two up to bed.

  Or, depending on how hot and bothered they made me, I’d instantaneously strip them right then and there with my item box and bend them over the table.

  Feeling my cheeks heat at the thought, I decided to temper my drinking as well.

  “Alright,” I sighed. “I asked, so I guess we’ll defer to your experience. Just, no games please.”

  “Of course!”

  With our pns set, we headed down the road and towards the gate.