A rain of applause filled the palace courtyard. A thousand aristocrats and nobles and officers and people filled the place, and thousands more trailed in from outside or watched from buildings and rooftops at history unfolding.

I opened my eyes and stood, turned, and I faced the people.

Jenna smiled nobly at me, the one she dubbed hero, and the people cheered louder.

Grins all around.

I raised my fist and shouted in victory.

It was good for once. No more dumb crazy shit happening. No getting chased by armies or navies or beasts or sexual freaks. Just vivid blue skies and the flowerpetal rainfall.

And with the main quest finished. Everyone dispersed into new lives, chasing whatever new dream they could find.

Vil and Lara had their wedding. He made me the best man. He stayed in the military, stationed there in Lambston, and Lara began to sing at local concerts--with pirate musicians and backup singers, of course.

Jessie opened up a BDSM club in town. It was as raunchy as it was expensive. We almost got shut down the other night when the Gimp King came over with his gimp army. Something about a "noise ordinance" and "public indecency."

The Phallomancer also moved her business in the city, selling both real and fake dicks and dick-related paraphernalia. Tourism spiked soon after.

And with a new influx of foreigners, we hosted the first international games.

The Card King held his tournament that took a grueling two weeks to finish, and when I faced him, we were both knocked out of the tournament. I was winning, of course, until the Card King played an ultimate self-destruct card and knocked us both out. He claimed it was how he would announce his retirement, which was a cool idea, but I had second-degree burns from the event.

In the meantime, the Gimp King held the first National Gimp Championships. In a coliseum arena, competing doms would order their gimp subs to attack a rival trainer's gimp. It was almost like chicken fighting or something but with specialized gimp skills. Lightning-type gimps were strong against water-type gimps. That sort of thing.

During the long vacation, I made some investments. Since I still technically owned land in the mountains, I decided to rebuild that estate and give it away to an orphanage.

Back at Jenna's palace, a new Gate was constructed, and there she regularly met with incoming foreign nobles from other worlds. I was there with her when the Spacer envoy arrived--that one asshole count--and with the sting of ruined pride, he shook my hand. With him was the Spacer admiral, a man who was alarmingly excited to try out magic for himself, and behind them came the furries.

Yes, the furries. The ones who were allegedly the real ancients of this world. The ones who lived with advanced technology that could still be found buried in places. The ones who went extinct before history had even began. Yes, those furries.

Essentially normal people but... animals. And not in a way that would be expected of human-animal hybrids, no. This was way more sexualized, and I really hoped it wouldn't awaken something within me when I saw those purring cat eyes and fluffy tails and expressive ears.

A catgirl stared me up and down as she walked by. Her soft tail glided across my leg. Behind her, a tall, muscular wolfman with hungry eyes that gazed deep into the abyss of me, reaching.

Goddamnit.

We brought them to the BDSM club after.

And we got another noise citation.

But it was all okay. For a while, we lived in a constant stream of parties and laughs and happy smiles.

Back at Laya's palace, Marianna appeared.

She was still in her white empress uniform, still shaken from our final battle, but now confused that she wasn't there at the goddess's desk and that she now stood at the gates of a palace. The world around an endless green field, the skies above a gentle blue, and a crisp breeze came and went.

Cassandra found her there and brought her in.

Explanations were passed back and forth.

Marianna made rejections. Angry ones. There were things she refused to believe. But Laya appeared and made her believe. She merged Marianna's essence into the same Marianna who killed the goddess, and she understood. She then remembered the events that led, somehow recursively, to this strange moment, but--

Now what? Was there still suffering? Could she finally be allowed to die? To finally be given that one everlasting peace?

Laya smiled softly at her.

And the world flashed before Marianna.

And she opened her eyes to a cornfield that reached high above her. Nearby a young teenager laughed with a young woman. She recognized it. Her heart pounded as she swam through the tall corn stalks and to the clearing, and when she found them, her heart stopped with fear and horror.

Her mother swung around her brother in a hug, and they laughed together.

Marianna looked at her hands and her body. She was young again. A teenager.

Her mother called for her.

Marianna stepped back. Her eyes widened, expecting the worst, expecting the one torture that would break her forever.

Her mother tilted her head at Marianna, and she called for her again.

Marianna stumbled and crawled back. She shook her head.

Her mother reached for her.

Marianna tried to get up, to sprint away, to run, run, run before her last fond memory was tarnished forever, and--

Her brother called out the name of their father.

Marianna couldn't resist. She couldn't. And she looked.

Her father stood there at the fence gate in his coveralls. His hands were dirty from a long day of work, and he smiled wide at his family.

There were people with him. A separate family. A man, a woman, and a terribly familiar girl about Marianna's age. The new neighbors, the father told them.

The girl's name was Leila.

A furry face appeared on the hologram screen. "Admiral Redrim," said the fox with bedroom eyes. "We've picked something up. I'm sending you the data now."

I set down my glass and stood to receive the data. I was still a woman--hadn't fixed that yet--but my military uniform was as dashing as it was sexually questionable. Scandalously lacking surface area, they told me. I opened the console and looked at the three-dimensional map of solar systems and planets. "Tell me about it," I said.

"We've detected sexual degenerate levels near that location," he said. "Give or take a few parsecs."

"And the analysis?"

"Alien gimp lifeforms, perhaps. Or it could be an entirely new species. Regardless," the fox smiled seductively, "if there is rogue sexual degeneracy elsewhere in the galaxy, we must find it."

I grinned back. I could never tell if these fuckin' furries were trying to eye-fuck me, of they were just being polite. "Very well," I said. "I'll investigate."

The fox saluted. "May the power of consent guide you."

"You as well."

His image flicked off, and I was alone again in my dimly lit command center. The new spaceship wasn't as big as my old battleship, but it made up for that in luxury. With the starlight flooding in from the wall to ceiling windows and with the warm glow of artificial candlelight, I felt at my greatest comfort. This was another benefit to this body. You can't feel like you were resting if you were never tired.

I leaned back in my squishy leather commander's chair, and as my mind began to drift, I reflected on my journey and adventure.

A lot had happened since I started out, and I had come a long, long way from my trashy harem days. That fake life with the fake happiness and the fake experiences. Sure, being turned into a trash can was shitty, and a lot of batshit stupid things happened along the way, but maybe it was for the best.

And besides...

The door hissed open.

A very drunk Vil and Lara fell stumbled in. Both were wearing some kind of slutty fetish gear--wait, no, that was just the uniform--and Vil had a suitcase under his arm.

Behind them, more people began to pour in. Jessie, dressed as a goth dominatrix. Doc Jackelope leashed like a dog and covered in hot candle wax. The Gimp King, whose bulge throbbed eagerly. And the Phallomancer, in full-dick regalia. Several more voices were hurrying in from down the hall, and I could hear moaning and snapping elsewhere in the ship.

They all began to slither up to me like hungry sexual snakes.

Vil shook a coin purse at me, and the contents rattled. "Alright, Redrim. We got a crate of stamina potions, the Gimp King's deluxe punishment bag, and a bag of quarters with your asshole's name on it. We're having an orgy in the back. You down?"

I grinned. "Yeah," I said. "Yeah, I think I’m down."

Hands reached out for me, to grip me by the wrists and the ankles and the breasts and the ass, and they led me down the hallway, toward the violet neon light of the party, our clothes unraveling in an almost religious experience.

Our ship, the Regenerate, sailed onward across spacetime.

And besides...

The real harem is the friends we make along the way.