Operation: Gloves… was a resounding failure.

One pair of gloves over my hands had no effect. Two pairs had no effect. Five pairs started to make a difference but only because I could barely move my fingers at that point.

I ended up with ten pairs of gloves over my hands just to protect my girlfriends from myself. Even then…

I was walking by Window and accidentally grazed my glove-covered hand against her arm.

That sent her to her knees twitching and moaning.

All I could do was look down at my hands and contemplate whether the power I gained was truly worth it. Was mastering the ability of my hands to the point where I could no longer casually touch my girlfriends without sending them to the tallest peaks of pleasure truly worth it?

On one hand, yes.

On the other hand, yes.

My hands were in unanimous agreement that it was worth it. As was most of the rest of my body, including everything below my neck. The only part of me that wasn’t so sure it was worth it was my brain.

Unfortunately, I did believe in listening to my brain. And my brain demanded that I find a solution to the issue at hand.

Given how neither Window nor Vala were able to help me, there was only one other person with their sort of godly power who I could depend on, and that was my own daughter.

“Luca,” I said, standing before her while she used her human form.

“Yeah, Papa?” Luca asked in response, as adorable as ever. She also started wearing overalls which made her extra cute.

“I need you to cut my hands off.”

“Okay! Wait. Nobody else is around to play the straight man.” Luca cleared her throat. “Don’t—don’t you think that’s way too extreme of a measure to jump to?!” she shouted before giggling. The straight man was not a very appropriate role for her seeing as how she would happily go along with anything. It was probably a good thing that there were no vans driving around offering free candy because there was a chance she would fall for them. “Papa… I can still read your narration even if I’m in this form.” She took after her mother in that regard. “Ehehe.”

“Alright, maybe cutting my hands off is a bad idea. Instead, I need you to… seal their power.”

“Seal their power? What kind of power?”

“You don’t need to know that part.”

“Is it adult stuff?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm. Okay. What if I make bracelets you can wear that limit the power of your hands? Then you can take the bracelets off whenever you want to go full power mode!”

“That’s good enough.”

“Okay!” One snap of her fingers later and a pair of simple, leather bracelets popped into existence around my wrists. “There! Try petting my head.”

I reached my hand forward to pet my daughter’s head.

“Hmm… it feels the same as before. But maybe the others will notice a difference? We need to experiment!”

“Good point. Alright, summon your mother here.”

Luca nodded and snapped her fingers once more, causing Window, also in her human form, to pop out of the air and land on the ground in front of us.

“I—I finally thought I would get some rest… and now you’ve brought me back to him,” Window said, looking up at me with eyes that almost looked afraid. And excited.

“Sorry, Mama, but this is for the greater good,” Luca said.

Before I could try out my sealed hands on Window, I looked at Luca and said, “Blind and deafen yourself until I touch your shoulder, alright?”

Luca nodded and spawned a blindfold and headphones for herself, leaving me to do whatever I wanted with Window.

“Don’t worry, Window. Luca made me these bracelets that should seal my powers.”

That fear and excitement in Window’s eyes disappeared as soon as she heard that. “Oh.”

“Don’t sound so disappointed!”

“Why wouldn’t I be disappointed?! You’ve kept me in a state of sexual bliss for weeks now! I haven’t had to think about anything other than your hands and pleasure! Life is amazing now! And I’m saving so much money from being too tired to whale on my gacha games! For once, it’s all of us women getting to live the dream instead of just you!”

I shook my head and sighed. “I’m sorry, Window. I’ve let you fall too deep into the endless pits of pleasure.”

“That’s a good thing! Don’t take it away from us now!”

“Window, nothing is getting done.”

“That’s fine! The volume ended! We don’t have to be doing anything but indulging in carnal pleasures right now!”

Luca raised her hand and said, “Mama, it’s a new volume now. This is the second chapter.”

I narrowed my eyes at Luca. “I thought you couldn’t hear anything?”

“I can if it’s appropriate enough for me to hear! Okay, I won’t be able to hear again now!”

Back to Window, she was finally starting to sweat. “Wai-wait… this is a new volume? You mean everybody can see—they can all see what’s going on? Have… have you narrated about me… you know… reacting to your hands?”

“I’ve thought about it, if that answers your question.”

“Then… then you have. Everybody… everybody knows my shameful reactions…”

“Anyways, I’m going to touch you now.”

“Wait! No! It’s—it’s too dangerous! What if you make me—you know, in front of everybody!”

“Nobody else is here.”

“The readers! Think of the readers!”

“Don’t worry about it. Luca sealed my hands with these bracelets, so you probably won’t even feel anything, remember?”

“Oh. Right.” She went back to looking and sounding borderline depressed.

So, reached down and poked her nose.

Window slammed her thighs shut against each other as her eyes widened with sparks of electricity firing off of her, her face turning pure red as she rolled over onto her side in a fit of spasming twitches and breathy moans with one hand over her chest and her other over her mouth.

That made no sense at all.

How was it that my hands still had such an effect on her even with my power sealed? Not to mention that it should have been impossible for my hands to have that sort of effect on a woman just by touching her nose in the first place.

Furthermore, petting Luca’s head felt just like normal to her, and I didn’t notice any extraordinary reactions from Valkyria whenever I touched her, either.

I needed somebody else to test my hands on. Somebody who was an adult woman with a soft, physical body.

That was why I left Window quivering on the ground to go over to Lake’s house with Luca.

It was as beautiful as ever at her place. The old-style house sitting in front of a beautiful, shining lake with vast mountains in the background—it looked like the kind of place I would want to spend the entire rest of my life at. All that was really missing was a huge garden to take care of. Then again, all the land around her house could easily be converted into that.

But that was beside the point.

The point was trying to figure out what was with my hands. I needed to know if every single adult woman with an actual, humanoid body was weak against my hands. So, while Lake was in the middle of fishing with her back turned to us, I walked right up to her and placed a hand on her shoulder.

Lake jumped… but not out of pleasure. Instead, she jumped from surprise and shouted, “What do you think you’re doing?! You can’t just sneak up on a sword like that! I’m old! It’s bad for my heart!”

“I see,” I replied, placing my hand on her shoulder again to rub it some more. “This doesn’t do anything to you?”

“It puts me in the mood for a shoulder rub but that’s it. So, why’d you come out here? Just to do weird things to my shoulder?”

“I’m testing out the power of my hands.”

“The… power of your hands?”

“The cause of all the noises you’ve been hearing.”

“Oh.”

“Sorry about those, by the way. Anyways.” I slipped the bracelets off and then touched her shoulder again. “What about now?”

“Nothing. But it feels weird when you touch my shoulder so sensually. Could you stop?”

I nodded and pulled my hand away. “Huh. So, it has no effect on you even though I just put a lot more effort into touching your shoulder than I did with Window’s nose. How come everybody but you and Luca are immune to the effects of my hands?”

Lake sighed and shook her head. “I see what’s going on. Are you truly that blind, Drake Hunter?”

“Apparently.”

Lake put her hand on my cheek and looked straight into my eyes. “This does nothing for you, right?”

“Right.”

Lake then leaned forward and placed her face right in front of my own, our lips almost touching. “And what about this?”

“Nothing at all.”

“Exactly. That’s because we’re not a thing. However we touch each other doesn’t matter, just like how you only grope your girlfriends and not me. It’s not about your hands or anything like that. It’s about who you are.”

It suddenly made sense.

My eyes were opened to the truth.

For weeks, I believed that I was able to pleasure my girlfriends because my hands were simply that incredible. I thought my hands were so full of raw, sexual energy that I could knock them to their knees simply by touching them.

But that wasn’t the case at all.

Instead, it was love.

Love.

My hands were simply a vehicle for my love.

Somebody with hands a million times more talented than mine could have touched their shoulders and they never would have reacted the same way. Instead, they reacted that way due to a combination of my love and their own expectations.

In other words, my hands were psychological warfare against my girlfriends.

It wasn’t me making them fall to their knees unable to remain conscious. It was themselves and their love and expectations for me.

That was why all I had to do was poke Window’s nose and she went down, totally defeated and unable to even say anything. My hands became the triggers to the guns of pleasure within their minds.

In other words…

I conditioned them to experience explosive pleasure whenever I touched them.

“You understand now?” Lake asked.

“I do,” I answered. “I now understand… that they are all incredibly easy to train.”

“It’s because they love you so much.”

“Any idea how to reverse the conditioning?”

“Have you tried touching them until they get burnt out on it?”

“Yeah. All that does is make them… break, over and over again until I eventually let go.”

“Their love for you might be even more severe than I thought.”

“You say that like it’s a deadly medical condition.”

“It’s on the same level as one. Hmm. If desensitizing them to it doesn’t work… all that’s needed is an intervention. We need to limit your exposure to them. They can stay with me for a week and are only allowed to see you with supervision where we can make sure that you don’t touch any of them.”

That made me feel a bit sad. I mean, who would want to not be allowed to touch their girlfriends for a week?

But if it was what needed to be done in order to break them of their hyper touching addiction… it needed to be done.

I even had a name in mind for the plan.

Operation: Separation.

I needed to go a whole week without touching my girlfriends at all. But at the same time, I wanted to progress in the battles. We were supposed to have a battle a day.

That meant I needed to recruit somebody else.

Luca could easily handle starting the actual battles, but I needed somebody else to fight with me in them since I only counted as one “hero.”

And that was when I had an idea.

Those giant, magnificent, fluffy cats who previously fought me as bosses had nothing better to be doing over in the cat village.

That meant it was time to fight alongside the fluff rather than against it. Meanwhile, Lake could gather up all my girlfriends to begin their week-long intervention with them to break their obsession with my hands.

Though, there was one problem bothering me.

The problem that I realized my hands weren’t actually all that incredible and it was it my girlfriends’ self-inflicted psychological warfare pleasuring them so greatly.

It made me want to actually get hands that powerful.

Maybe I could convince Window or Vala to give me such hands somehow, but that could wait until after they recovered from their conditions.