ACR - Ch4

The homestead felt like the best option to Lyle. Whatever advantages offered by the mine, they were outweighed by the draw of a simple home. Lyle’s mind wandered back to the idea of a quieter life.

If he was going to establish himself in one place, it was smart to take everything he could from the other locations. Most of what was at the lake could wait until he had built his new home, as it was furniture, but the guardhouse was of immediate interest.

A handful of corruption wards ringed the homestead, but nowhere near enough to protect even a meagre field. But the guardhouse had a large number of active wards. Lyle decided to pry them off. To do that, he needed help.

“Ein, come here,” he said, gesturing to the wolfgirl. She’d wandered away while he’d considered his next move.

She bounded over to him without hesitation. Reflexively, he found himself running a hand through her tail. She giggled at the touch, leaning against him and curving her eyes in pleasure. Her hands wandered, beginning to undo his pants.

“Not now,” he said. He ran a finger along her collar. “I need you to sit still for a while. This will take a few minutes.”

Ein tilted her head and watched Lyle as he rifled through the boxes in the front of his wagon. He quickly returned with a small tool roughly the size of his palm. It looked like an intricate pair of pliers, but tiny glass beads ran along each prong. Within each bead was a ball of black matter that moved of its own accord, as if it was alive.

Probably because it was alive. That matter was raw corruption—known as Blightfest—and it was dangerous even to Lyle. The glass was magical and nigh-unbreakable.

“What’s that?” Ein asked, staring wide-eyed at the strange tool.

“It’s a magical focus—known as a magnifier. I doubt you know what a scalpel is, but think of it like a very small, very fine knife for precise cuts.” Lyle spun the magnifier in his hand. “This allows me to use my magic like a scalpel, but much more reliably. I’m a fighter, so I need a tool to use precise magic. Meddling with your collar is that sort of magic.”

“You’re doing something with the collar?” Ein backed up a step, placing her hands around her collar. Shadow shimmered over her fingers, and her expression grew alarmed.

“Not like that,” Lyle said sharply.

She calmed down, lowered her hands.

Sighing, Lyle continued, “I’m going to code your collar so that you can walk through weaker corruption wards, like the ones around the guardhouse.”

“What about that one?” she said, pointing her head at the mine entrance.

“That one’s too powerful, and it’s formed from a consecrated steel ward. Your collar can’t be coded to go through it,” Lyle admitted.

“Never?”

“Not with my smithing abilities.” He ran his finger along the length of the collar. “Collars need a band of consecrated steel inserted within them in order to go through that sort of ward. It’s how we restrict access of tame monstergirls to certain locations.”

“By putting death in their collar,” Ein said drily. “Got it.”

“It doesn’t hurt you if it’s inside the brass. But yes, it’s not something done lightly. I won’t do it, as I both lack the steel and the ability to reliably alter a collar,” he said.

“I’m happy with what you’re giving me. Although I’m surprised you’ll let me into your wagon.” She frowned, waiting for him to reject her.

He didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Instead, he got to work. He placed the magnifier against her collar and gestured for Ein to sit down.

Once she sat still, her tail wagging slowly, he slowly pushed magic from his crest into the tool.

Instantly, the Blightfest in the magnifier expanded to fill the entirety of each bead. Thin lines of light lit up along the metal between each glass bead. They connected to the collar, which then glowed dully.

“At some point I have to let you and your sisters near me,” Lyle said, breaking the silence.

“I’d say we get plenty near you.” Ein grinned. She giggled. “That tickles. Is that supposed to happen?”

“The spell I’m casting is a form of counter-ward, so yes. It’s normal for you to feel something.”

“A counter-ward.” She frowned. “If I’m right, you call the magic that protects humans from us ‘wards.’ So that means you’re giving me protection against it. Isn’t that dangerous? Couldn’t a monstergirl reverse-engineer it and work out a way through the really big ward?”

“No,” Lyle said. “There is no counter-ward to get through the border. Only the Priestess herself can bypass those, and she’s never done so.”

“Papa mentioned her,” Ein said idly. “She’s super old. Sounds like a monstergirl to me.”

“She doesn’t have wings or a tail, or a constant desire to fuck men, so I doubt it,” Lyle said, his lips quirking upward. No doubt Ein had hoped to needle him with that suggestion, but the idea that the Priestess was corrupted was a theory as old as the woman herself.

She wasn’t called the Priestess of the Damned because she was popular.

As Lyle worked, Ein’s eyes were drawn to the Blightfest inside the magnifier. He could almost see the gears working inside her head.

“How are you using the Blight to help your magic?” she asked slowly. “You’re messing with a collar to let me through corruption wards. That makes no sense.”

“Maybe. But that’s how it works,” Lyle said, careful not to lose his concentration. “I’m a combat mage, so my knowledge of the theory is weak. But there’s a strong tie between magic and the Blight. The Priestess taught the Royal Army to embrace that connection, although we’re protected from corruption by her grace.”

“I don’t get it,” Ein whined.

“The magical spells cast by humans used to be different. These days, there’s not much difference between the magic of monstergirls and that of humans. To survive, we adapted. We forged tools to control the Blight, changed soldiers like me to fight forever and never age, and integrated willing monstergirls into society,” he explained.

“Is that what you’re doing to us?” she asked.

“Does this look like society to you?” Lyle gestured to the desolate ruin around him. “But to answer your original question, I don’t truly know.”

He suspected that he would know by the time he uncovered the family secret, and what lay behind the Blight.

The process to recode Ein’s collar took close to fifteen minutes. She grew restless in that time, and the rest of the Vierfach teased her from a distance while she glared at them.

The reason why they kept their distance became apparent once Lyle declared he was done.

“Fuck you! Get back here!” Ein screeched. She flung herself dozens of meters in the air, missing one of the Vierfach by inches. Her claw opened a gash in her sister’s leg.

Lyle swore and rose to his feet. Then he froze as raucous laughter erupted around him. Ein charged around the clearing, swiping at her sisters with her claws and occasionally drawing blood and opening up massive wounds that would put Lyle out of commission for weeks. The Vierfach didn’t even slow and even bounded up sheer rock faces as blood poured down their bodies.

Once they calmed down, he noted that their wounds were already healing. The blood remained, but only one of them remained hurt. Lyle watched as her flesh restitched itself in front of his eyes.

“As a reminder, I don’t heal that fast,” Lyle said.

The Vierfach collectively rolled their eyes. “We know that. Mama made us be careful around Papa.”

Lyle coded the remaining collars in short order. As he did so, Ein began peeling off the wards from the guardhouse. Her sisters slowly joined her, sometimes clambering up the stone walls of the guardhouse to rip the brass shields off. An hour later, they had collected sixteen brass wards plus a larger one from the top of the guardhouse.

Lyle didn’t know if he’d use the big one. It was intended to prevent aerial entry, but the fields might be too large for it to work.

Job done, they had lunch, fucked, and set off for the homestead. The Vierfach took turns riding in the wagon with Lyle. They quickly realized he didn’t do anything to control the automaton horse and used this as extra time for sex.

“So this is going to be our den?” the Vierfach chirped in unison, except for Ein.

Lyle frowned as he realized there was a significant gap in behavior between the lead sister of the quadruplets and the rest of them.

“Once we rebuild it,” he said.

That involved more work than he expected.

Spring passed quickly. He had arrived halfway through the season, of course, but establishing a farm had involved endless days of backbreaking labor from dawn to dusk. Normally, that wouldn’t be new to Lyle, but a lot else was.

At first, he slept in the wagon with the Vierfach. That meant cuddling up with four naked wolfgirls who wanted to do nothing other than have sex with him all day long. Given how busy they were during the day, he let them enjoy themselves at night. That meant the wagon smelled of sex and their juices. Each night, they’d crush their bodies against him and ride his cock in turns.

At some point, he’d tell them it was enough, and they’d collectively slip off to the river to clean up. Lyle joined them initially but stopped soon enough. Attention from other monstergirls grew, and it became too dangerous for his liking.

Those first couple of weeks were focused on getting into the rhythm of things. Collecting material to rebuild the farmhouse, establishing the fields, recharging the corruption wards, scouting for unwanted attention.

“Do we really need to wear clothes?” the Vierfach whined one day.

Lyle had gotten into the habit of referring to the simpler three quadruplets as the Vierfach, as they acted as a collective separate to Ein. Rarely, the four sisters acted as a single unit, but even then, Ein had a clear leadership role while Zwei, Drei, and Vier obeyed without question.

“You won’t get dirty as often,” Lyle said. He’d given some thought to his argument for clothing. Protection didn’t matter, as the wolfgirls healed too rapidly. They didn’t care about decency.

But cleanliness? The Vierfach whined every time Lyle prevented them from slinking off to the river to clean off whatever dirt they accumulated during their work.

“Really?” they chorused, dubious about his claim.

“The dirt gets on the clothes, rather than your skin. You’ve noticed how I’m never as dirty each night, even though I work as hard as you,” he said.

“Harder,” Ein muttered. She dumped a pair of logs nearby. “Although you certainly get pretty dirty at some point.” She grinned lewdly.

“And whose fault is that?” he said.

“Ours! Ours!” the Vierfach said. They giggled and advanced on Lyle. He pushed down their heads, but there were three of them, and they rubbed up against him despite his efforts.

“We’ll trade with the birdgirls for some clothing,” Ein said. “They usually have some.”

“Do you need to give them anything?”

“Gossip, maybe. They’ve started watching us, so I’ll see what I can tell them without saying too much,” Ein said. Her expression became strained as Lyle’s eyes focused on her. “Look, birdgirls love to chatter more than they like anything else. And I might learn some more from them.”

“They’re watching us anyway,” he said. “Don’t tell them anything about the wards or my magic.”

“I won’t,” Ein said.

“We won’t,” the Vierfach said. They blinked. “We are all going, right?”

“Why? You three need to keep collecting wood. And remember to chop up the tree into logs, you idiots. Lyle needs them to be the right size for when he cuts them up at the… what did you call it again?” Ein scowled.

“Carpentry station. It’s just a bunch of tools and a bench, though,” he said.

“New words are nice, though,” Ein said.

The Vierfach rolled their eyes and pushed Ein from all sides. “Silly.”

Birdgirls were a worrisome presence, however. While Ein was able to trade some simple clothes from them—four simple black tunics, plus some ribbons that the Vierfach spent several hours tying in each other’s hair—Lyle remained concerned about spies.

And there were plenty of candidates to suspect.

During the day, a few birdgirls would flutter about in the distance. They’d find perches high above and watch. Sometimes they’d gather together and chat, throwing furtive glances toward Lyle and the Vierfach. More often, each bird remained solitary.

At night, one of the nocturnal varieties would appear without fail. Owls were common, but there were plenty of other birds, usually from the nightjar family. Lyle was certain the same nighthawk spied on him when he had bathed with the Vierfach originally.

Although the birdgirls had never shown signs of aggression, their constant presence disconcerted him.

He also disliked bathing while being watched by masturbating birdgirls in the distance. It was possible for him to pretend that the birdsong he heard throughout the day and night came from ordinary birds when he didn’t see them, but when they were crying out in pleasure above his head it became harder.

The Vierfach found his behavior odd, but he’d never been one for public bathing. He added some sort of private bath to his priority list of tasks. Using magic to clean himself off grew old fast, and the wolfgirls pestered him constantly to join them.

By the end of the first two weeks, he’d accomplished plenty. Or so he felt.

Most of the work they’d done had been in collecting wood. There were plenty of trees nearby, and Lyle wanted to push the tree line back somewhat. Based on where the previous corruption wards had been, the trees had gotten too close for his liking. Monstergirls could have easily jumped from the treetops into the fields.

The trees were corrupted, and that made the wood brittle and awful to work with. Lyle had experimented with the strange wood and found it impossible to use in its original form. The wood itself was black, like charcoal, and the bubbles from the leaves and bark carried into the trunk. The wood was soft enough to work, but the blisters within them could be as large as Lyle’s head and were tougher than iron.

Initially, he considered moving the woodcutting operation to the lake. The trees looked normal there. But while the Vierfach could easily carry the logs down to the homestead, he didn’t know what effects the lingering corruption might have on those “normal” trees. Until he knew how the lake remained corruption-free, building a home from it was too dangerous.

Instead, he used the same magic found in Ghraive’s water filtration plants. Rather than using a magnifier tool, he used an amplifier tool for his magic. By increasing the magic from his crest, he was able to push the corruption out of the wood.

Or at least, he could once the corruption wards went up. If he used the spell now, the Blight would immediately attack the purified wood.

For now, he had a large pile of corrupted wooden logs that the wolfgirls had cut into various lengths. Some were larger, and intended to be converted into planks, flooring, or fencing, but many would be used directly in the farmhouse. But the wood stockpile was significant.

He had also made more progress with the wards. Each night, he devoted a significant length of time charging as many wards as he could.

“How come my papa doesn’t have a tattoo as cool as this?” Ein asked him one night as she ran her fingers along his back. Her sisters were still playing in the river while he focused on charging the wards.

“Magic crests are hereditary. We lost the ability to create new ones when the Blight arrived,” Lyle answered. His crest glowed constantly as he pumped magic into a brass shield between his legs.

“It’s the same color as the light from the wards and my collar, but I can’t feel anything,” Ein said. He felt her fingers trace the pattern of his crest, which was that of a dragon’s face. “I could do this all day, you know.”

“You seem fascinated by it.”

“You have a tattoo on your back that lets you do the impossible,” Ein said. “You say that monstergirls can also use magic, but you need a tattoo?”

“That’s how it works for humans. Without a crest, humans need to use tools like amplifiers, and those are expensive and cumbersome. A magic crest becomes more intricate as we pass it on to each child. My brother received the same one as me, although he took to his better. I received mine when I was ten, and it remains my most painful memory.”

“Painful?” Ein sounded surprised.

“It’s not a tattoo, despite what it looks like. It’s branded into my body with magic,” he said. “Then they use a magically infused paint mixed with a bunch of pigments, powdered metal and crystals, plus lots of other things. Doing that prevents any scarring or wounds from damaging the crest, as the crest grows back.”

Ein’s fingers ran over one of the deeper scars on his back. “Like this one. How did you get this? It goes all the way around your waist.”

He smiled, staring down at the object he was focused on, but his mind was buried in the past. “A mantisgirl. I was young. She was collared, but I hadn’t realized that the magic in the collar had run out years prior. Luck saved me. Her first slice was halfway through my body when it bounced off a rock. Nearly sliced me in two. She chipped her blade in the process, stumbled, and I cut her head off despite the agony I was in.”

“Oh.” Ein didn’t say anything more, although her fingers continued to run along his back. She hadn’t been lying when she said she could do this all day. Her interest in his crest overwhelmed even her bottomless sex drive.

When the Vierfach returned, Ein pushed back against their attempts to seize a spot next to Lyle. She cuddled close to him that night, and woke him up with a long, slow ride.

By the end of the first few weeks, he ended up with nearly two dozen corruption wards. He stuck each on the end of a log and spread them around the borders of the homestead. Once done, he used his crest to activate the wards. A wall of purple light snapped into existence around the perimeter of the farm.

That gave him enough space to grow his fields and even build some extra structures if necessary. The downside was that the wards were stretched thin compared to the density on the guardhouse. They’d need regular recharging and could be penetrated relatively easily by a stronger monstergirl.

The forest wolf pack hadn’t made itself shown yet, so Lyle didn’t concern himself with it. Whenever the Vierfach went exploring, they found no signs of any nearby wolfgirls. Only other monstergirls and monsters. Slimes, a few catgirls, birdgirls everywhere, and a few stray beegirls close to the river.

“So, this means we start building, doesn’t it?” Ein said.

“It does. And the first thing I’m building is a bath,” Lyle said, arms crossed.

That meant irrigation. And irrigation meant teaching the Vierfach how to use a shovel. They weren’t terribly good at it initially, and he needed to repair a few handles.

Maybe more than a few.

Construction was a slog. Measuring up logs and planks. Then cutting them. Sometimes getting the cut wrong and cursing, which got the Vierfach riled up and attracted birdgirls.

By the time spring ended, Lyle had a home, however. A house, a basic field, and an outdoor bath.

Or half a house, at least. He’d call it a third if somebody pressed him, given most of the iron and stone frame was untouched. Now that Lyle was building on the farmhouse’s frame, he had a new appreciation for how massive it was.

Turned out, a two-story building was a lot of work to build when every single log needs to be converted with magic. Lyle needed to split his time between cutting logs for the exterior, planks for flooring, and waterproofed blocks for the irrigation channel and outdoor bath. He told himself that build a fence one day.

The Vierfach proved their worth, even if they soaked up nearly two hours of his time each day with their bottomless sex drives. They dug the irrigation channel and bath. Anything that needed carrying was carted around by them without complaint, although they sometimes copped a feel. They hurled around logs heavy enough to cripple Lyle as if they were twigs, while he needed to use magic to even heft them.

Each of the Vierfach also took turns topping up food supplies with hunting, as they were still getting used to the preserved meats and vegetables that Lyle had brought north. Although they liked the meat a hell of a lot more than the grains he tried to shove down their gullets each day.

Once finished, it was finally time to move in and appreciate their new home. No more nights crushed together with four wolfgirls in that little wagon.

Somehow, that made the sleeping arrangement sound better than it was.

“Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever mated on a bed before,” Ein said, bouncing on the massive bed she and her sisters had brought down from the lakeside hut.

With the house rebuilt, the furniture in the hut became useful. Lyle had made a trip with the Vierfach to gather most of it. The magic-fueled appliances in the kitchen were particularly useful, as they could be powered using his crest. Eventually, he might get his hands on a magical generator from Ghraive, but how many years away might that be? The one in the hut had been missing, with a noticeable hole in the exterior being the only sign of its existence.

“How much experience have you and your sisters even had before me?” Lyle asked.

“Uh, not much?” Ein scratched her cheek.

The rest of the Vierfach leaped against Lyle, barreling against his back, and knocking him over. They fell onto the bed in a pile.

“We borrowed a dildo from a flock on our way here,” the Vierfach said, rubbing themselves against him. “But he was way worse than you.”

Given that sort of statement, Lyle found himself all but forced to break in his new bed. It probably wasn’t the best use of an entire day, but it was oddly satisfying to finally dry out the Vierfach’s seemingly endless sex drive. The four of them lay against each other on the bed. They stared up at him with glassy eyes as pools of cum poured out of their gaping pussies and all over their legs and the bedsheets.

Lyle cleaned himself off using Ein’s mouth, and she barely registered him with a light moan. Then he left them alone and left the bedroom.

The farmhouse consisted of only a few rooms, plus a storehouse. He’d built two bedrooms—even if only one would be used for now—a kitchen, an entry hall that doubled as a living space, and a dining room. The storehouse connected to the kitchen, but the frame of the house suggested that it was intended to be used as part of a larger processing area for the homestead. For the time being, he had moved some of his food into it.

Outside, the sun began to set on the small field. Lyle had brought a selection of seeds from Ghraive, not knowing what might happen to them due to the corruption or what water he’d have to deal with. Fortunately, he didn’t need to worry. The ground here was plentiful and fertile.

As he rested in the outdoor bath, he knew that he’d only established the basics. The birdgirls were becoming enough of a nuisance that he needed to investigate them. He didn’t know where the wolf pack was.

Closer to home, his field was basic. Hunting was time-consuming for the Vierfach. If he wanted a well-balanced diet, he needed a reliable source of protein. His homestead needed expanding.

And, at some point, he’d look into the Blight. But, for now, he focused on his immediate issues. Said immediate issues included some quadruplet wolfgirls currently draining out on his bed. Spring was over, and Lyle had settled into his new home.

The heat of summer of awaited him.

- - - - - - - - -

Commentary: This is the end of spring, and the first real "expansion" chapter of the story, where Lyle just expands his homestead. I'm also trying to elaborate a little more on the magic side of things, although some of that is a mystery tied to the Blight (it's not much of a mystery, if you realize that this story is inspired by Hollow Knight).

Up next: birdgirls and eggs. Most of my editing involves working out the level of sex I want in the story. The original version had four sex scenes in about 18k words, with several more on the horizon. Things got horny fast.

I'll be posting the next few chapters over the coming days as I edit them. They may come in batches like these ones. It depends. Chapter 10 is the last of my pre-written stuff, and there'll be some alternate scenes of Messengers based on pre-edit content.