DD 203 Ch 9

Des wandered out of the bedroom partition, still half-asleep and walking stiffly. She passed Crimson, who was sitting at the counter, and pecked her on the cheek.

Still a morning zombie, she walked over to the pan and looked at the available pancake mix before staring back at the pan, as if waiting for the pancakes to magically make themselves.

I got up, walked behind Des, and gently grabbed her by the shoulder, scooting her over to the chair. "I don't think you're in a state that I should be letting you play with fire and hot things," I said.

Des yawned in the seat, "Probably for the best. So where have you been?" She glanced at Crimson out of the corner of her eye.

Crimson started to talk, but I talked over her. "She won't tell us. Well, she'll tell us about the UG thing, but not where she's really been," I said.

That seemed to wake Des up a little. "You mean Crimson has a problem she can't solve?"

"I can solve it. It's just going to take time," Crimson snapped back.

Des hummed in response, "Sure you can. If you didn't know it, Ken's family is a clan of assassins. If someone's causing you problems, you can hire Ken to..." Rather than finish the sentence, she drew her thumb across her neck and stuck her tongue out.

"Oh, I'm well aware," Crimson laughed. "And if it gets any worse, I might just do that."

So there was something.

Des glanced back at me. "See, now you know what to get Crimson for her birthday."

"My birthday?" Crimson perked up, frowning.

"Don't worry about that," I said a little quickly. Crimson squinted back at me.

"Anyway," Crimson drew out the word and glanced over at Des. "It's not important where I've been. What is important is that Ken is planning a date for me."

Des made an appropriate "ooh" and "ah". "Where are you going?"

"He won't tell me," Crimson said.

Des looked back at me, bouncing her eyebrows. "Should we make it a full group date?"

"I don't think that's necessary. It would be good for me and Crimson to have some alone time, especially because you'd get me all day for the raid," I pointed out.

Des pouted and melted onto the table. "That hardly counts. We're just throwing ourselves at the raid, dying repeatedly while listening to healers bitch and moan."

I rolled my eyes, but started another round of pancakes for Des. "Crimson said it just takes time.”

“Everyone is sounding like a broken record," Des said, "saying the same thing. But if enough people are saying it, then I can only assume it must be true. Or at least some truth to it."

Crimson continued to work on her three plates of pancakes, two were already gone, her eyes flitting to where I was working on them as well. "I'll give you another round after I finish with Des."

Crimson had a giant smile on her face before she stuffed it full of more pancakes.

Laden with so much syrup and butter, I was a little worried for her before I once again looked at her waistline and realized that worry was completely worthless.

Adventurers weren't really human after they had been in a dungeon too long. Not only were they capable of burning massive amounts of calories, but the mana flowing in their bodies helped keep them at what they saw as their ideal form.

"So Ken has a secret date, Crimson has a secret problem," Des confirmed, "so what's my secret?"

"You don't have a secret," I said.

"You could help me secretly extract Ken's secret," Crimson offered.

Des smiled, "That's easy, all you have to do is tie him up and make him beg."

Crimson pouted back, "But he won't let me tie him up, it's a man thing."

Des shot back, "Or you could let him tie you up and make him beg."

I flipped out my first pancake, "I have a feeling all of Des' answers are essentially going to boil down to, 'make me beg'."

She smiled, "You know me so well." Her pink eyes glittered with unsated lust.

Last night we hadn't gotten up to any antics because everyone had been exhausted mentally and physically from the raid, and I knew my temptress would be at it today. It seemed she wasn't alone though in waking up to the smell of pancakes.

Elysara was rubbing out her bleary eyes. The princess sat down at the table on the other side of Crimson and pulled out a tea cup with gold framing on it and began to make a pot of tea. The pot was just as decorative, gold vines and leaves wrapped up around the white porcelain.

"Really?" I asked, looking at the tea set.

Elysara shrugged, "I'm a princess dammit."

Crimson was eyeing the teapot and cup. "Would you like some?" Elysara asked taking out another matching up.

"Yes, please." Crimson pulled out her own cup, rather than take the one rimmed with gold, with gold vines and leaves painted on it. Crimson's cup, as you might call it, was a dented-up metal mug that likely weighed twenty pounds by how thick the metal looked.

"You'd drink out of that?" Des asked, aghast.

"Look!" Crimson held her hands up. "It's gotten me through the worst, and it's durable enough that it survived… it survived being thrown at a naga head. Well, through a naga head," Crimson corrected herself.

"Oh, yes. Wonderful. I can just see it now," Des mimed, being a showwoman, gesturing to an imaginary cup. "Buy the mug now, the indestructible mug, the one that can blow your head off."

"I blew the naga's head off. The cup just survived the action," Crimson pointedly took a sip from her mug, as Elysara did so too, but far more daintily.

"Just remember that when you take her on a date," Des pointed at the indestructible metal mug. "She has a tendency of breaking things."

"Going on a date?" Elysara perked up. "I want a date."

I held my hand up as I flipped another pancake out, finishing Desmonda's stack of pancakes, and sliding them over to the warlock.

She eagerly took them, drizzling just a smidge of syrup over them, before taking a banana out of her CID and starting to cut it up.

"I'd like some blueberries in mine," Elysara put her order in, seeing Des.

"Pancakes finished, you're after Crimson," I deadpanned, realizing I was now stuck being the chef for the group, and slid my half-eaten pancakes over closer to me, so I could steal a few bites in between making theirs.

"Also, I will take everyone I can on dates," I said slowly. "These next few days, Crimson is kindly letting us to recover," I pointed at our teacher, and there was no way she was getting out of it, once I continued to let that spread amongst the class. Especially with the rest of my harem, all likely wanting dates.

Crimson held her hands up, in surrender. "I'm not going back on that. You all get to relax. Don't expect this every time between the raid, but the first few are always the hardest. You'll have more people stick around, if I let you guys rest and acclimate between them, rather than continuing to push you hard."

Des gasped. "Crimson? Realizing that people have limits? Alright, what did you do with our Crimson?"

We all laughed. Save for Crimson, who was busy rolling her eyes. "I have enough experience to know when to let up. This isn’t my first rodeo," she pointed out.

"Yes…" I trailed off wondering what was bothering her. "Let's just say most people expect to nearly die every day of class with you."

That only made Crimson smile wider. "Good, then they have the right expectation coming into it. I don't have any interest in teaching soft students. The dungeon requires all of us to be at least a little hard. Just not so hard that we turn brittle," she punctuated the end with raising her eyebrow.

I nodded along, "thus the breaks."

"Exactly!" She smiled. "I knew you were my best student.”

“Do you treat all of your best students like you treat Ken?" Des bobbed her eyebrows.

"No, Ken is special. To be honest, after you guys graduate, I doubt I will go back to teaching at Haylon."

We hadn't ever discussed this before. But on some level, I knew Crimson enjoyed the teaching, and I was somewhat surprised to hear she wouldn't be going back.

Crimson must have read my face, "because you and I will be diving as deep as we can into the dungeon." She clarified, flashing me a grin, as if to say, ‘and you are going to like it.’

It was my turn to hold my hands up and surrender. "Of course, we'll go all the way to the bottom.”

“I wonder what's at the bottom," Elysara rejoined the conversation, leaving her tea to cool. "It's been a topic of debate amongst elven scholars. Do humans have any theories?" I looked at the other two, both of whom shook their heads.

"Not really," Crimson answered on behalf of humanity. "Probably like the elves, there are definitely some people who have thrown out some wild guesses. But there's no data that we can really use to guess with any certainty what's at the bottom of the dungeon. Or if there even is a bottom. For all we know, the dungeon could expand in some sort of infinity. For the most part, the dungeon has been outside of science's ability to explain."

Elysara nodded along and continued to sip at her tea.

The others seemed to wake up one after the other. Charlotte then came out and sat feeding Bun-Bun just before Fayeth came out next and sleepily shooed me away from her kitchen so she could take point.

It came as no surprise when Felin was the last one to wake up, yawning and stretching with one of my shirts on. She made her way over to where we were all sitting, enjoying pancakes, for some of us our fifth serving.

I glanced at Crimson, who was demolishing yet another plate.

Felin crawled into my lap and made herself at home before she began eating what was left of my second serving of pancakes.

I gave her a poke. "Get your own."

She only wiggled deeper in my lap, her tail curling around my hips to keep herself seated. "I am hungry and isn't it your responsibility as my mate to make sure I have enough energy?" She threw out a lazy excuse and my pancakes disappeared. A moment later, a large satisfied smile appeared on her face as she rubbed her stomach.

"What's the plan for today?" Des asked.

"Well, I was hoping you could find a way to keep Crimson busy," I glanced at Des. "Meanwhile, I think I was gonna go on a shopping date with Fayeth."

My Adrel perked up at that. "Wonderful, I was just hoping we could go shopping," Fayeth said calmly as she cooked four skillets of pancakes at a time.

"I think I'd like to go shopping for a few things myself," Des said, glancing at Crimson. "Not to mention, I would appreciate it if you helped portal me around so I could get more locations for my own portal ability."

Crimson rubbed her chin. "I can do something this morning, but this afternoon I have to go run another errand for the UG. Unless, of course, you want to come along, Des, in which case we could run you through a few dead branches of the dungeon and give you portals."

Des nodded at that. "I would appreciate it."

Crimson shrugged. "If Ken will tell me when my date will be, I'll make sure I'm free." She leaned against my shoulder and batted her lashes at me.

"How does tomorrow night sound?"

"Perfect," Crimson was quick to agree. She gave me a side squeeze before handing another empty plate to Fayeth, who gave the insatiable woman a long glare as she served her up what I assumed would be her last stack of pancakes.

"I'm making Felin next, then Ken’s replacement," Fayeth said, taking out a small carton of cream and a whole stack of bacon. Felin's tail wiggled so hard in my lap at the sight of cream and bacon that I knew the Nekorian would be absolutely satisfied with Fayeth's newest creation.

"That leaves me at odd ends," Elysara said, "but I have plenty of things I can take care of.”

“Such as demolishing SJS financials, trade deals?” Des asked.

Elysara gave her a feral grin. "Precisely."

Charlotte pulled Felin out of my lap. "And I will take this one and do my best to keep her out of trouble." Even as she said that, Bun Bun was inching away towards Fayeth's cabinet. The elf dropped a cleaver in front of the rabbit with a hard glare.

"You might want to recruit help. It seems you have two troublemakers on your hands," Fayeth said to Charlotte.

"I think Penny was wanting to spend time with me," Charlotte offered, "and Felin seems to get along well with her."

Felin gave all of us a toothy grin. "She's the one who writes the sex story."

This caused me to groan, I rubbed a hand against my face. I'm sure they would be okay. All of them were grown women, and they could handle themselves. But sometimes I wondered how they all survived in this world.

***

Fayeth, even if she had spoken casually while cooking earlier was taking the shopping trip seriously.

She was dressed to the nines, wearing a pair of heels that I had never seen before along with one of her Saintess dresses, though this one was a lovely blue and white that went with her eyes.

“Aren’t you lovely today.” I took her arm and hooked it in mine as we stepped through the portal that Des had made out to the surface. It dumped us out in an outdoor mall.

“On the rare chance I get you alone. I hope I’m lovely.” She pecked my cheek with a kiss. “What are you looking for?”

“Resistance potions. We never really used them in the past, but I was curious if there’d be anything for that boss. The parrot’s sonic attack was what really kept wrecking the raid.” I said. “But that’s just a single stop. After that we should look at the none adventurer related shops.”

It was just for a moment, but I could almost feel Fayeth’s disappointment that I was shopping for the raid.

“Which ones?” She asked.

“That one there is going to be filled with dining and cookware.” I pointed out the housewares store. “Then that one is semiformal clothes.”

“The complexity of your formal-semiformal-casual part of English is beyond confusing.” She said picking at her dress. “There are some conventions for station, but you just wear nice things to impress people when you want to.”

“I tend to agree.” Chuckling, I led her through the mall. It was a lovely space, with a little playground for the kids to congregate along with peaceful seating by a bubbling fountain that was clean despite birds flocking over it.

Simply walking through it with her lifted my spirits.

“Oh. What about that store?” Fayeth pointed at a jewelry store with a big poster of a woman dripping in diamonds.

“You know exactly what’s in that store.” I chuckled. “Unless you were pointing at the underwear store next to it.”

Fayeth gave me a pair of puppy dog eyes that I couldn’t resist.

“Let’s go check it out.” I couldn’t help but notice she fiddled with the simple ring on her finger, the one that had caused the confusion when we first met. I had been kneeling to pick up loot when the elves first ran into me and was supposed to offer Elves a gift on our first meeting.

The loot in question just happened to be that ring she was still wearing.

Perhaps I should upgrade it.

Walking into the store, Fayeth caught a saleswoman’s attention before she did a double take staring at Fayeth’s ears.

“Welcome to our store.” The woman’s eyes flit down to see the CIDs on our wrists and a smile bloomed on her face. Contrary to the stores audacious sign, the woman was in a simple suit and skirt, a few thin pieces of jewelry on her rather than the diamond dripping woman in the picture. “What would you be looking for? You’re an elf, correct?”

Fayeth nodded, “Yes I am.”

“Wow.” The woman blinked. “I’ve never seen one before. Then again, I’m not an adventurer diving deep into the dungeon. You two must be high level to still look so young. Levels are better than any beauty cream, I just never had a taste for adventure.”

“It takes a certain type.” I agreed. “Fayeth here is the tank.”

“Good thing I won’t be throwing any damage your way.” The woman drew us over to the display cases as she talked. “I’m afraid I don’t know elven customs. Is there any particular piece of jewelry you’re looking for?”

Before Fayeth could speak up, I grabbed her hand and showed the woman the ring. “It’s a long story, but I proposed with a ring from the dungeon. It has some sentimental value, but I was wondering if your store did custom jewelry, could you give this one an upgrade?”

She glanced at me and then nodded sheepishly with a giant blush on her face.

I knew I’d picked the right thing. Fayeth was sentimental enough that throwing it out for a new one wouldn’t sit well with her. But upgrading the old ring? That was perfect.

“It’ll lose its stats if we melt it.” The woman said. “We don’t have anyone skilled enough to actually give it stats.”

I waved away her concern. “It’s only a plus one stamina.”

She nodded and then slid us over to a case full of glittering rings. “Which one catches your eye sweety?” She turned to Fayeth.

The elf’s eyes shined with the glittering rings reflecting in them. Like two wide pools of stars, she hesitantly picked one. “That one.”

“Let’s try it on and see.” The woman pulled out all of the trays like she was going to let Fayeth wear each one.

After all, adventurers were known for being wealthy and I had a feeling we weren’t leaving the store until she’d made a sale.