DD 301 Ch 10

Class resumed much as I had expected. Everything was normal, or at least as normal as could be expected with Crimson teaching. We spent our mornings in the classroom at Star City and our afternoons in the gravity chamber, with every third day spent entirely in the dungeon.

It was tough, but everybody continued because they were seeing results. There was simply no denying that our efforts were fruitful. 

After two weeks of hard work, we were finally released from the daily monotony and encouraged to push deeper into the dungeon for the weekend. This would be my last trip down before I had my duel with Karnak.

"So, where are we going exactly?" Harley asked. 

I turned and looked. Our entire class had followed me, just as I had intended. 

"If I say it's a secret, will you stop asking?" I replied.

To give Harley a little credit, she paused and thought about her answer. "No. Besides, would it even be fun if you snuck off without me?" 

"Even more fun without you," Des said from beside us, her giant smile made eerie by the light of the campfire. 

"You know, Des, you're going to say something like that one day and hurt someone's feelings," Harley said, somehow managing to keep a straight face. 

"Ah, yes, hurt someone's feelings. It would be an absolute shame if I were to do something like that." Des answered.

"At least you understand," Harley turned her nose up, but there was a slight sparkle in her eye that told me she was enjoying the banter.

"Well, Harley, I could tell you a secret," I said, causing more of the people around the campfire to tune in to our conversation, "but then I would upset Crimson. And let me be perfectly clear. I am far, far more terrified of her than I am of you." 

"Seems perfectly reasonable to me," Penny shrugged. "I too would be terrified of upsetting Crimson." 

"When you say it like that, you make her sound like a monster," I rolled my eyes. "However, this involves a secret of Crimson's and mine." 

I glanced over at my party, some of whom knew exactly what I was talking about. Eyes of wisdom would let me find the trials within the dungeon.

"If it's Ken's secret, then leave it alone." A voice said, surprising me.

I turned to find Helen glaring across the campfire.

"What? Don't look at me." she snorted. "If me asking everyone to give a common courtesy is such a fucking big deal, then I think all of you have something to learn about manners." 

I still stared at her, unblinking, replaying the conversation and once again confirming Helen had come to my defense. Then I paused and replayed it again once more just to be sure that I wasn’t hallucinating.

Des gasped and covered her mouth. "I never thought I would see the day.”

“I will shove my mace so far up you that you'll taste steel," Helen growled at Des. 

"Ah, there's the Helen we all know and, well, I don't know if love would be the right word for it," I said.

Helen snorted and tossed her bright red hair. "You talk too much." 

"Well, well," I said, smiling at everyone and trying to mediate the conversation. "If we're all feeling talkative, I'm sure there's someone who has a game that we can all play.”

“Or we could talk about the latest episode of '74 Wives'." Selene leaned forward, conspiratorially over the fire.

"You all do realize Penny is right here," I gestured at the writer of said story. It felt a little rude for them to talk about it with the author in their midst. 

"Yeah, so?" Selene asked, turning to Penny. "I love your story. Also, the sex scenes are a~ma~zing." She sang the word. 

And the blue-haired frost knight blushed furiously under the praise and the attention.

"Don't tease her too much. Or she'll get as ripe as a tomato," Des leaned forward and motioned for Selene to continue. 

"I have to say, you're sending mixed signals. But sometimes mixed signals can be a fun trope," Selene continued.

I had a feeling Penny was going to be thoroughly embarrassed before the night was done. 

They all got into it, going into far more detail than I needed to hear about Penny's story. And apparently in that story, I was very well endowed.

When they kept discussing the matter and looked my way for my opinion, I did the proper response of grumbling unintelligibly. There really isn’t a good answer for that one that doesn’t make me look silly.

Of course that didn’t stop them from continuing on about the story.

"Don't you want a little more realism than that?" I hesitated to ask a question about the current sex scene being discussed. "I mean, that's not even possible." 

Candace shook her head. "Some things aren't about being believable as much as they are being enjoyable." 

"Oh," I said, unsure what else to say. 

"What Candace said," Selene nodded towards the other woman. "I mean, you can't go so far that it's completely outside the realm of belief. But you also have to make it just a little exaggerative to be fun." 

"Ah, yes," I said, still not really understanding. 

"Look, we can't all get the real deal," Selene pursed her lips. "So some of us have to be content with the fantasy. And so we're only going to get the fantasy, it better be the best fucking ever." 

Several of the other ladies around the group all began nodding in agreement. 

"So the fantasy is better than the real thing?" I asked, just doing my part to participate and, in general, understand. Clearly we were not moving off this topic.

"It's not so much about the fantasy being better than the real thing," Helen spoke with sudden authority, causing several of the others to turn to her in surprise. "Don't look at me like that. It just makes sense that it's not just about being perfect. It's about making the fantasy-- I mean if you're going to waste your time reading 74 Wives, then it better be fucking worth that time."

A sliced smile spread across Des's lips. "In your experience, would you say it's been worth it?" Des leaned forward as if she was a co-conspirator with Helen.

The paladin startled. "Well, I wouldn't know, would I?" Helen turned slowly to Des. "Of course, I would never read the thing.”

“Of course!” Des agreed with a smile that was far too wide.

"I said I have not read it," Helen's voice became even more tense.

"I didn't say you had," Des held her hands up in surrender. "You just do seem to have a comment about it, which is interesting given that you've never read it."

"Why would I read trash like that?" Helen asked, and Penny stomped her foot, surprising us all.

Penny was Helen’s former partymate, and while she was generally a soft, good-natured woman, it seemed speaking about her story in that tone had upset her, at least by the way she glared at Helen.

The redhead clearly knew she'd fucked up by the way she instantly hesitated and began to backtrack. "Not that I wouldn't, just clearly not my personal tastes," Helen tried to salvage the situation.

"Of course not. Why would you read trash like that?" Penny glared at her former party mate.

"Fuck, Penn, don't put me in a hard spot here," Helen switched immediately to pleading.

"I'm not doing anything. You seem more than capable of speaking for yourself," Penny crossed her arms over her chest.

Helen's eyes shifted across the group. "Look, I'm not trying to shame anyone that reads this stuff."

However the more she denied it, the more I thought she had in fact read it. Read it quite a lot.

"Of course not, that would be unspeakably rude," Des rolled her eyes. "And you? Helen, rude? Never." I could see just how hard Helen clenched her teeth.

"I'm sorry," she said, turning her gaze to Penny. "I know your story is important to you and I didn't mean to upset you.”

“Intentions aside, I don't expect you to like it. I don't even expect you to read it. But I certainly won't put up with you insulting it to my face." Penny answered.

"Yeah, that's fair. I'm sorry, Penn," Helen held her hands up in surrender.

"Well, how about we just give it a break?" I looked around the campfire.

"So if you have an opinion about it," Des continued with a broad smile, "that must mean you've at least looked between the pages."

Helen hesitated, and I could see the trap that Des had laid. On one hand, she would either upset Penny further by saying that she hadn't even read it before, throwing down such a harsh judgment of the book. Or she would admit what Des wanted the whole time, which was that she had read it. Either way, Helen was about to lose. And it was clear that Des smelled blood.

The tension over the campfire was broken when Felin slammed into me, wrapping herself around my shoulders and shaking me. "I want meat. I want to eat meat."

"Wait, does she mean..." Selene started, but I shook my head, already knowing where her thoughts were going. 

"No, Charlotte's still cooking, and Felin is hungry despite the fact that Charlotte made her a sandwich. It had tomatoes, lettuce, and onions in it," I said, giving the Nekorian a look. 

"What? I'm more like a cat than a human. My diet should be mostly meat," Felin said, crossing her arms underneath her chest. Given that all she was wearing was a sports bra and an open leather jacket, the gesture had quite the effect. I was always fascinated by the blue tiger stripes that looked like tattoos on her skin, making me stare at her flesh. 

"Meat?" Felin asked once again, hope in her eyes.

"Don't you have an entire CID of fish? Why don't you pull that out and cook it for yourself?" I pushed.

Felin pulled out a slab of fish and held it up to me, offering with big wide eyes, "Cook?" 

I sighed, snatching the slab from her. "One of these days you're going to need to learn how to cook."

"I know how to cook," Felin said. "I just like it when my mate cooks for me," she smiled, a little pur escaping her throat.

I sighed and looked away. "Don't use that on me," I said, moving towards the fire. Felin let out a little growl of victory, at least that's how I interpreted the noise, and scampered closer to the fire to watch my every action. Her tail began to bat at the front of my pants. 

"Do you really just like other people cooking for you?" I asked, starting to prep the stove. 

"Yep, yep." Felin nodded, her ears flapping against the top of her head. "Food definitely tastes better when someone else cooks it. Maybe it's also a community thing for me. Back home, we all ate around campfires and cooked for one another. That's what meowthers did for the children. And what husbands would do for their wives. And what mates would do for each other.”

“Of course I'll do it for you, Felin. You're my mate.” I told her.

“And because I give you wonderful tail jobs?" She asked, leaning on my shoulders and watching me cook. 

"Wait, hold up," Selene said urgently, "Tail jobs?" 

Felin's tail flit over and lay in Selene's lap. "Yeah, feel how soft and silky my tail is?" She wiggled just the tip until Selene grabbed it and began stroking the fur. 

"It is pretty soft." Selene agreed.

Felin was oddly proud of her tail, so I felt like I couldn't say anything about it and just watched the train wreck continue, staring into the fire and focusing on cooking the fish, hoping this would end soon. 

"I think Ken's spunk is the secret ingredient for why it's getting even softer," Felin said in a whisper that was loud enough that everyone at the campfire heard it. Rather than recoil from that new information, Selene began stroking the tail even more. 

"Penn. For research purposes, you have to document this. And then include it in 74 Wives." Selene stated.

Penny blushed and glanced at me, only for me to shrug helplessly. "Whatever you write in your book is for you and your fans. Please, just do what you think is best.”

After only the briefest moment of hesitation, Penny nodded. 

"Well, in the story, since it follows our dungeon adventure, perhaps Felin could give a demonstration during an orgy in the middle of a campfire."

A sudden thought occurred to me. If it was 'Seventy-Four Wives' and it was clearly me and a representation of the rest of the class, as well as the other two classes that had fallen behind, my eyes shifted over to Helen. Did that mean somewhere in the stories I was sleeping with the harem queen's daughter? 

"What are you looking at?" Helen growled. 

"Nothing. Just making sure you're not uncomfortable with this talk of Penny's story," I said, trying to save myself. 

"It's fine," Helen said, only for Penny's devilish grin to come back. "Wasn't there something we were talking about, Helen?" The redhead looked distinctly uncomfortable. 

Just then, one of the tripwires outside of our camp jingled, and everyone's laughter died in their throats.

Weapons were out everywhere, armor was being summoned onto bodies, and all of us were ready for a fight in the blink of an eye as we glowed with readied abilities.

A smirk crossed my face at how quickly we could go from being a group of students laughing around the campfire to a dangerous militant force. 

There was a thud a moment later, after the jingle.

"I suppose that's as much of a greeting as I'm going to get, but I would have preferred not to startle all of you quite so badly." A massive figure loomed at the edge of our camp, reaching down and tugging at the wire around his ankle. More jingling continued before he got the wire off of him. "I come in peace. My party is just behind me." He stated in a deep baritone.

The man stepped forward. He was as big as an Orkai, standing perhaps seven and a half or eight feet tall, but unlike the Orkai that were a lean wall of muscle, this man certainly had some fat on him, or perhaps I should say blubber. He had two fin-like ears flopping on the side of his head as his gaze swept across our group, and he spoke again. "As I said, I come in peace." His skin was a dusky blue, and he blended in well with the nighttime vibe on this dungeon floor. As he stepped forward, I noticed there was a large whale tail that dragged on the ground behind him. 

"Ah, hello," I said, stepping forward, attempting to not look intimidated.

I realized he was holding an anchor, which he dropped behind him. It was bigger than even some of the most ridiculous battle-axes I had seen. And it had plenty of chain wrapped around its shaft. Uncoiled, he'd be able to swing that weapon very far. 

"Ah, you're a strange one," he said, leaning down towards me, and then glancing at the gathering around the campfire. "Or perhaps not. It is a pleasure to meet you, Sir Incubus. And now I understand why there's such a large party cohabitating so peacefully together." He nodded towards me, giving me the credit. "They must be yours. I've known more than a few Incubi to covet our Whalewyrn ladies." 

I glanced at the man up and down, my mind running through mental gymnastics of what the female of his race might look like. And honestly, my creativity was coming up short, only for my curiosity to be piqued. 

"Ken Nagato, nice to meet you." I held out a hand. 

"Always a pleasure," he said, a massive, meaty fist encompassing my own. "You don’t happen know the way down to Breach, do you?" He tilted his head, regarding me strangely. 

"Ah, Breach? No, we're currently staying in Star City since the shuffle.” I offered, unsure where this conversation was about to go, and hoping it was not about to lead to a fight with this giant man and his anchor.