I was hardly idle while working with Buttercup on her teeny weeny, itty bitty little issue with her boss, using Eromancy in a way it probably wasn’t meant to be used. Follow current ɴᴏᴠᴇʟs on novel★fire.net

While everyone was getting their mana disacclimation steam bath and regretting doing so, I approached my work bench and sighed, looking at the cancer cure. I had less than a day. Hours, if I was lucky. Perhaps hours didn’t seem like enough to a single person, but I now had triple the time.

“You appear troubled,” Chrysta said, and listened as I explained all about my worries. Claudius was behind whatever crusade sent all the Agency people after me, that much was obvious on the surface.

“Please do not worry, Fletcher,” she said. “I will make your security and your mother’s cure my number one concern. For the moment, allow me to assist you using my new ability, Potioncraft.”

“Answer a question for me, if you could,” I said.

“Anything,” she responded.

“How is it you and Larelle gained classes, and Larelle ended up with a bond mate but you decided not to?”

“Ah,” she said. “This answer is drawn from the new system that your Claudius and Jocinda implemented when they first arrived. The two of them, when they traveled through the portal and journeyed throughout all the lands known to us, began by naming the things, and touching base with all the gods and sentient Nakamamon of the world. They rose in level as she learned about wilderness and the species of wild Nkaamamon. Claudius ended up becoming a Wizard, and learning was fuel for his own leveling process.”

“How… did you know all this?” I asked. And why hadn’t she mentioned it before?

She pulled my hand up and put her lips to it. “You must understand my position, Fletcher. When I met with Claudius and Jocinda, there was already some dissent among our peoples as to whether we should help them in their odd quest. Many Nakamamon thought we should seek to destroy this system of theirs. Events were far from perfect when they arrived, but the system further complicated matters and many species thought these two were the cause.”

“Hang on. Your position is what exactly?”

“I was asked by a council of gods and extremely potent Nakamamon with joining and then collecting information on this flood of incoming humans. Then, I was asked to report on whether your species and your Agency were to be believed. If we could trust your kind, we could remain allies and help further your cause.”

I just stared, while all the questions kept whirling around up in my mind. Even as I had very elastic and athletic sex with Azalea in a cave, and Buttercup hovered just feet away, holding hands with the god-powered silhouette Buttercup, Chrysta’s words put Myriad Mind into overdrive.

“I have come to believe your species is not singular in purpose, and therefore trust must be gained on an individual basis.” My mouth worked open and closed. No sound came out. “Your trial period of trust proved inconclusive, but evidence pushed you into the realm of trustworthiness.”

“I’m… glad.”

“Furthermore, neither are humans and the Agency that employ them synonymous, or one and the same. You actively go against the edicts of your Agency.”

“Can we circle back to Jocinda and Claudius?” I couldn’t believe all this information was readily available from the very start, and I was only getting access to it now. Holy mackerel.

She nodded sagely. “Of course. They traveled around, naming any and everything they could, learning and learning, growing in power. Both of them began to perform feats of power that bordered on the godly. The people of my world were amazed. Meanwhile, they signed peace treaties each time they came across large settlements of sentient Nakamamon.

“From what I understand, when the system was created, they had bartered with the gods to allow for it. Jocinda and Claudius wished to emulate something called the Player Handbook, but Barbarian and Fighter and Warlock had no place in this world and the gods disallowed it. The classes Paladin and Monk were too focused on pure violence.”

“And Rogue wasn’t?”

She shook her head. “My information is not firsthand… either a particular god argued for the inclusion of a particular class, or Jocinda and Claudius successfully convinced them, it is unclear. My knowledge here is all rumor and speculation, and no real substance.

“They settled on the classes as you know them: Bard, Druid, Guardian, Healer, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, and Wizard. Bard for entertainment and jubilation, Druid for power over the wilds, Healer for obvious reasons, Ranger for exploration, Rogue for ferreting out deception, Sorcerer… honestly Fletcher, I cannot speak to the purpose of the Sorcerer, but Wizard for the accumulation of knowledge and mastery over magic. ” She finished awkwardly.

I still had so many questions, but I wasn’t going to get all of them answered right now. Monk and Paladin made sense, while Cleric didn’t. I imagined the most obvious answer might be that the gods weren’t comfortable having humans ask them for divine power. As for Sorcerer, the allure of mastery over magic was a powerful one, a specific element or school of magic, made sense.

“Now, as to your question, any of us who sought to gain a class needed first to sign a treaty with your Agency on an individual basis, a binding magical agreement to do no harm against Agency personnel with Jocinda and Claudius at the top.”

“Paranoid little bastard,” I muttered.

“We then give up some of our Nakamamon power in order to make room in the soul for this character class to take hold.”

That was interesting. She claimed to have a lot more aspect based powers before. More ghost abilities and ice abilities, that were given up so she could manifest the shield and have social check defenses just like Ivy and Isabelle.

“Is it the same with bonding?”

She shook her head. “The bond requires prolonged contact. Larelle can easily manage this. My ghost aspect terrifies most potential bond mates. My ice aspect damages most others. And truly, if you were to look at the bonding from a practical standpoint, it makes sense to bond with an opposed aspect Nakamamon. Fairy or divine, for instance… but they would never be able to tolerate my presence long enough to initialize the bonding, let alone finalize it.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Do not be. My ghost aspect allows me to push aside and avoid emotions that would debilitate or cripple other beings. Much like fairy aspects creating a sense of joy or pure childlike excitement around them, but the opposite, and internal.” She tapped her chin with one finger. “Although… many ghost aspect abilities.

I knew a whole generation of earthlings that would bond with a ghost aspect in a heartbeat if it meant being able to deaden their emotions.

“It was my hope that my aspects would be… reduced… enough to allow for a bonding. It was not so. The core of who I am was not so much fundamentally altered as shifted slightly to allow for the Guardian to grow within me.” She shrugged. “Perhaps if my Guardian level increased to the point where my nature was altered further…”

There was a lot to process, but suffice it to say, Jocinda and Claudius had treated this place like an abandoned candy store, taken everything they wanted, and discarded or ignored the rest. They treated it like a pet project rather than a world full of its own people, its own history, its unique physics… and they’d done to it what so many explorers did with natives. That urge to exploit, invade, and eventually conquer seemed like it was too difficult to push away.

Had they created some fun names for things? Yes. But after that? Was I pleased that they’d created this system? Sort of.

“Now please, put this out of your mind. I doubt much of this is of any use to you. For now, we much cure the cancer within your mother. Your goal is noble and I will do everything in my power to assist you.”

I considered… now that I could bond a third Nakamamon, a choice I’d been sitting on for ages, I thought perhaps Chrysta was the one. Yes Buttercup made obvious sense to try bonding. If I could, it would mean breaking the bond with Claudius and ending a whole lot of problems. I might even be able to convince her to take a bit of targeted revenge on her old owner.

He probably had plenty of ways to stop her.

But in all honesty, I didn’t want to attack Claudius. I didn’t want to have revenge in my closet of skeletons. I didn’t want skeletons in my closet. I’d prefer the worst one to be the time I’d lost my temper with Cinzy and shouted at her, cementing her decision to leave the team.

The other options were Azalea, who would probably jump at the opportunity, and April, but just because she was the most adorable thing in the universe, and hung on my every word and action.

“You will do everything in your power to assist me?” I asked.

She blinked at me.

“Of course!” she said. I was still suppressing some of her ghost aspect, and the change in her emotions was as clear as it was welcome.

“May I entrust you with a secret mission?” I asked, and used Psyspeech to make the request of her where no lurking avatar of darkness Nakamamon would be able to overhear it.

“Yes of course, but…”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll look to the east on the morning of the third day.”

She cocked her head at me again.

“One last thing.” I took both of her hands in mine. “Chrysta, would you like to bond with me?”

Chrysta didn’t move for long enough that I thought perhaps Buttercup had stopped time again.

“You can?”

“I can.”

“And you want to…”

“I do.”

“With… me?”

“With you.”

The words took a long time to sink in. She took a long time staring in my eyes, perhaps looking for some kind of bad-natured joke. Finally she blinked, opened her mouth, and shrieked like any fan of a pop star at any pop concert in history.

It took some time for her to stop hopping up and down, and for the waterworks to calm down. She was crying joyous, tiny hailstones that went thwock thwock thwock thwock thwock onto the floor of my laboratory and clutching my hands like I might suddenly decide against it and pull away. It was the most adorable thing I’d seen since laying eyes on April.

The world was full of adorable-ness. Adorability.

“I want to do it now,” she told me. “While I can feel like this. I want to hold onto this, and remember it.”

“As you wish,” I told her.

Intertwining my magic with another being was something you could accomplish at level 12. I’d been far beyond that for some time. It wasn’t a complicated process, even though Shakindria had wanted to make it seem as though it was. Now though, I had Mana Affinity to tell me what to do, and Mana Shaping to let me do exactly what I needed.

Chrysta was already extending a thread of her ghostly ice aspected magic my way, and I extended my own magic back towards her from the chakra in my forehead. This was magic of the Healer: bright, earthy, and alive. It was also magic of the Pleasure Seeker: vibrant, luscious, and sensual. The twining rope of my twin magics went straight into hers, and just as she wound her thread around mine, I did likewise with hers.

Now, any normal person from earth might believe you can’t braid your magic around someone else’s magic while they braid their magic around yours. Those people are wrong and don’t have the first clue about magic itself. Magic can do anything.

We could braid our magics into one another with our hands clasped and fingers intertwined, and we did.

The ghost magic was ethereal and dispassionate and regretful. Ice magic was boundless cold, and both of those complemented one another immensely. I like to think Healer and Pleasure Seeker magics did too, a quest to continue life, and a celebration of life as well.

Chrysta was filling up my workplace with tiny hailstones, some of which were already melting.

And the process was complete, though she didn’t let go of my hands when the UI message appeared and started listing off gifts.

Congratulations! You have bonded with a Hauntcicle.

You have gained the following:

*Ghost resistance

*Puppetry

*Ice resistance

*Blizzard

Ghost resistance: You are immune to ghost aspect damage from your bonded Nakamamon. All ghost aspect damage has a 50% chance to be reduced to zero. Any ghost aspect damage taken is reduced by 50%. This functions identically for status effects derived from ghost aspect damage.

Puppetry: Spend a Durability Token and make a Durability check against a target you can see that’s no more than 30 feet away. This check uses your Relationship level as your skill level. On a success, your body becomes incorporeal and you enter your target’s body. You have full control over their words and actions for 5 minutes, though you do not have access to the target’s abilities.

Ice resistance: You are immune to ice aspect damage from your bonded Nakamamon. All ice aspect damage has a 50% chance to be reduced to zero. Any ice aspect damage taken is reduced by 50%. This functions identically for status effects derived from ice aspect damage.

Blizzard: Spend an Affinity Token to create a snowstorm centered on any point you choose within 50 feet. The snowstorm stretches for 50 feet in all directions. The blizzard causes minor ice aspect damage for those who spend at least 5 seconds within. It reduces vision and has a low chance to cause a target to slip and fall prone.

I blinked at all the text. Puppetry… was insanely powerful. Blizzard… was insanely useful. I couldn’t help but be astonished that Chrysta had never employed these.

Then again, Nakamamon didn’t attack one another. She could, and probably had, used these abilities on wild or non-sentient Nakamamon, most likely as a deterrent.

“Holy wow,” I said in wonder.

In return, Chrysta had gained Healing Breath and Lingering Touch. That was odd. I looked through these, using Mana Affinity to give me an idea of what they could do.

Healing Breath was exactly as it sounded like: the ability to heal up by breathing on a subject. I’d had this exact ability before, though Chrysta’s version was far more potent. Lingering Touch meant she could use a kind of light telekinesis to maintain intimate contact with a lover at a distance. It didn’t even cost a Token, but instead used a skill check that escalated in difficulty over the course of the day, like Psyspeech.

I could already feel Chrysta using phantom fingers to travel up and down my body, from hips to chest and higher. They wove around my neck and through my hair, then softly skimmed my cheekbones. Finally, she pressed one finger to my lips, then quickly dragged that finger up and down. The result was like a toddler’s babbling.

“Bbibblbblbblbblbblbblbblbble…”

She removed her phantom finger, and now the hailstones leaking from her eyes were from laughter.

“Thank you so much,” I said sardonically.

“The other girls are indeed correct,” she said, wiping a rime of frost off her face. “Making you do silly things is very agreeable.”

“I love you too,” I told her.

She stiffened. “What?”

“I love you too. Now, I have some work—”

It took another ten minutes for her to stop kissing my face and running phantom hands all over my body even while had her arms and legs wrapped around me.

“I love you very much too, Christopher Jiminyjangles Fletcher.”

“What?”

“I love you so much?” she repeated, confused.

“No, the other part, where I have a silly middle name.”

She blinked in confusion. “I was informed by Tara and Regina that your middle name was… oh I see… it is another silly tease.”

This is Christopher laughing, and finally ready to get his cancer cure over and done.