It was past midday when I arrived at the town defended by Titania, delayed by destroying a few monster hordes I had came across. Therefore, I wasn’t particularly surprised to find the town surrounded by an impressive number of weaker monsters, assaulting the walls without a break.

None of these monsters were particularly strong, meaning that after their latest explosive ploy was destroyed, the enemy was relying on the constant attacks to keep the pressure up, hoping to exhaust the defenders, both in terms of endurance and equipment.

And it seemed to be working. Even with weaker students and citizens showing a much greater combat ability compared to my last visit thanks to their level increase and the stat boosts from the achievements they triggered, the stronger fighters were getting significantly lesser benefit from the continuous assault of the weaker monsters. However, they were still unable to rest because they needed to respond to the breaches, preventing the monsters from cutting a swathe through the weaker defenders.

Titania was the one that best exemplified that exhaustion, standing on the most visible location on the walls, only using her magic when absolutely necessary, and even then, it was a use soft, the flickering blast of light that lacked her usual domineering vigor.

I might have even worried if I couldn’t feel her current through our connection, much stronger than her weak blasts might suggest. Good, I thought. She was following my suggestion about faking exhaustion, meaning she was ready for an ambush.

The same applied to Marianne, who was healing only the deadly cases at the back of the line, keeping most of her mana in reserve. It wasn’t the most efficient way for a healer to work, but after getting proficient with the life energy trick I had taught her, she wasn’t just a healer. She represented a deadly hidden card against an undead assault.

I was tempted to pull her along to my time with Titania once again, helping her recover her mana while I once again enjoyed their combined attention, but unfortunately, pulling both of them from the siege would affect the defenses negatively.

After a magical message to Titania, I sneaked into her room, waiting for her to appear. Since she needed to organize the defenses before taking a break, it took a while for her to arrive, and I spent that time using magic to checking the surroundings, both by checking the wards to get any hint of the agents of the Eternals, and using my new detection capabilities to detect undead presence.

-482 Mana

The security of my lovers was an important thing, especially with such a complicated siege going on.

When the checks resulted in no outcome, I turned my attention to the wards of the room. Just because I detected no enemy presence didn’t mean that there was no enemy presence, or that they couldn’t pay me another visit. Though, in the interest of multitasking, I started to reconstruct the furniture in the room by adding some magical resistance, both making the room safer and improving my craft skill. With my mana and stats, maximizing an expert-tier skill was trivial.

-5981 Mana

16 Craft

It took fifteen minutes for Titania to arrive, a time enough to turn her room into a temporary fortress. Then she arrived, making me abandon those attempts in the interest of more interesting things.

“Hi-” she started, only to let out a cute little cry when I grabbed her wrist and pulled her on my lap. A cute expression appeared on her face as I leaned, ready to capture her lips, something that would have made people gasp in shock if they had seen her blushing like an innocent young maiden.

I started kissing her, and she melted under my touch immediately, her domineering attitude nonexistent under my touch. Technically, the aim of the kiss was to transfer mana, but at this point, even for her, it was a poorly constructed excuse for her passion.

-319 Mana

100 Experience

A brief yet heated kiss later, I pulled back, caressing her cheek gently, happy about the kiss as much as I was happy about the experience gain. I had missed the addictive sensation of slowly growing stronger. Even with my suspicions toward the source of my unique system, more power wasn’t something to be discarded.

“So, how were things?” I asked.

“Nothing unexpected, just continuous siege,” she answered before launching a summary of the highlights, none of them triggering suspicion. “Anything on your side?”

“A few,” I answered with a quirked smile even as my hands started to work on her robe, unbuttoning it with a teasing slowness even as I kissed her neck, rather than explaining.

“Caesar!” she warned petulantly, once again cute enough to irrevocably destroy her scary persona if there was an observer, earning a bright smile from me. “Don’t dawdle.”

“Oh,” I said even as I unlocked another button before slipping my hand inside, slipping under her blouse to caress her stomach softly, teasing a particularly sensitive spot. “I was under the impression that you enjoyed my dawdling, should I change my approach and make it a more serious meeting.”

“Caesar…” she repeated, but under the focused attention of my skilled fingers, her earlier teasing tone had long disappeared, replaced by a needy gasp. She said nothing else as my lips on her neck and my fingers under her blouse launched a dedicated assault, and when I made a show of pulling my hand away, she grabbed my wrist, keeping it in place.

300 Experience

Even as the main instigator of her transformation, I was finding it hard to believe the things I was getting away with in terms of teasing her, from naughty threesomes to extended foreplays. It was so difficult to believe she was the same person that had scared me witless for so many years.

It was incredible.

I chuckled at her silent surrender before starting to explain. “The biggest difference is the arrival of the royal procession. The crown princess arrived with a literal army, either determined to link her fate to our school, or willing to invade.”

“Yeah, like something like that is possible with the headmistress’s presence,” Titania answered dismissively, utterly convinced with the headmistress’s power. Considering that she had also seen her angelic visage while receiving her own light node, her fascination was understandable. The headmistress displayed an invincible figure, even though I was starting to suspect that it might not exactly reflect reality. It wasn’t that the headmistress was weak, but she was housing the Divine Core inside her body rather than the platform. And considering the lack of ease she was showing in manipulating the divine energy, it significantly reduced her combat capability.

Unless she was willing to use it as an uncontrollable explosive, destroying both the target and the several miles of the landscape around the target. Not exactly the most useful to defend against a sneak attack unless she wanted to destroy the school along with the princess.

Still, just because I managed to dupe her about my origins and power didn’t mean that she was actually gullible. If that was the case, she couldn’t have maintained her position for a couple of centuries while a huge spread of enemies targeted her position. Even my trickery was through a unique combination of several outlandish abilities and circumstances, allowing me to escape her cursory examination, while the war prevented her from doing a deeper assessment and possibly alienating the imaginary force behind me.

Since Titania didn’t seem to know much about the princess, I decided to skip the topic after mentioning that I was helping Oeyne with the spear, giving some details I had discovered, but ultimately underselling it both in terms of the effort it required and the eventual usefulness. I trusted Titania, but not to a point of forgetting she still trusted the headmistress completely. Until I could take the top place without a doubt or turn the headmistress to a trusted ally, revealing every single thing to her was not an option.

As I explained, I continued to caress her soft skin while slowly stripping her, making it even harder for her to focus on my words. Her robe was first to go, followed by her blouse and corset, allowing me to lean down to capture her nipples, teasing them by alternating kisses and bites.

500 Experience

This time, she wasn’t bothered by the cessation of my explanation. I slid my hands down to get rid of her long skirt, leaving only her panties to protect her delicious cheeks. I cupped them, and she moaned gently, happy with the treatment she was receiving.

A moan escaped her mouth as my fingers found the source of her dampness once more, teasing gently. A significant contrast to my lips, which was busy teasing her nipples with a surprising aggressiveness, making her gasp and cry repeatedly, destroying any chance of her asking me to continue with my explanation.

500 Experience

As I enjoyed treating her, I examined the reaction of the system, in particular, trying to find any hints of weakening that might signal to stop receiving the experience. I wanted to be able to get a good sense of the link between the amount of Divine Spark and the potential experience. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to detect anything. I was starting to suspect that there might not be a link, but even if there was one, it was certainly not happening in my soul space, but at the other end of the mysterious connection that made something like the System possible.

With that determination, I turned my focus on Titania, ripping off her panties aggressively with a pull, then freed my shaft. But when she tried to impale herself impatiently, I stopped with a smug smile on my lips, just enough to convey without a doubt that I was delaying it intentionally.

“Do you have any news from the other towns?” I asked. “Any explicit move from the stronger liches?”

“Nothing yet,” she answered, trying to keep her tone even, trying to counter my assault by feigning a lack of caring, but failing spectacularly. “Still, t-things are getting dangerous,” she stammered, unable to prevent herself from moaning in between words despite the seriousness of the topic. “They are sending more and more monsters to stress the defenses, but they are yet to make a move to capitalize it.”

“Yeah, the enemy has more cards than we were expecting,” I said. “Only thanks to the new light-magic capabilities that were bestowed by the headmistress that I was able to discover hidden zombie army near the school, positioned for a deadly ambush.”

Titania froze, displaying a shock that was significantly stronger than a group of undead deserved. After all, that ambush didn’t even get a top-three status, even if we were limiting it to the events we were together. Certainly not when compared to the ambush that almost killed her, or the sudden appearance of the death knights that almost turned our ambush into a grave —or a lack of one, considering the enemy.

“T-the headmistress bestowed you the power of light!” Titania said, a huge smile blossoming on her face despite her sudden seriousness. “Then, you know her identity as well!”

“Oh, did I forget to mention that,” I said with a mocking tone, acting like it was deliberate teasing from my end rather than genuinely forgetting to bring it up with everything that was going on…

—————

Level: 31 Experience: 468593

/ 496000

Strength: 46 Charisma: 58

Precision: 40 Perception: 42

Agility: 40 Manipulation: 45

Speed: 39 Intelligence: 49

Endurance: 39 Wisdom: 51

HP: 6324

/ 6324 Mana: 7595

/ 7595

SKILLS

Master Melee 100

/100

Master Tantric 100

/100

Master Biomancy 100

/100

Master Elemental 100

/100

Master Arcana 100

/100

Master Subterfuge 100

/100

Expert Speech 75

/75

Expert Craft 75

/75

PERKS

Mana Regeneration

Skill Share

Empowerment (1

/1)

Teleportation

COMPANIONS

Cornelia – Level 21

/25

Helga – Level 17

/21