The immediate problem upon looping back was that I had to choose between rushing to stop the lunch, or forfeiting the loop from the beginning to gather information.

As I moved over to give Hilda her extremely lengthy kiss to start off the loop, I tried visualizing what would happen if I crashed the palace lunch knowing only what I did now. I would yell "Stop, Soh'fia! Don't eat anything!", presumably everyone would stop for safety's sake, and then... I would be like, yo, the food is poisoned. If you don't believe me, check under your bed for holes...? Also, I'm suspicious of someone you trust deeply, but have no real evidence in favor of this? Nah. I just didn't see how that would work.

Dakka was the key to this. She had been hired to do the assassination, and Leh'hah had taken me to her store on the first day—Leh'hah, the high elf attendant of Bah'loh'kah. It was a tenuous connection, but it was there, and I could easily imagine Leh'hah just defaulting to a store he knew without thinking of the significance. Heck, it was possible Dakka was a last resort they busted out only when the fucking Heir of the World announced he knew of an upcoming assassination attempt. Maybe in that first loop, they were going to rely on just the poison, and it would have been completely safe to show me to Dakka. Little did they know I was a master of both time travel and making tenuous leaps of logic.

My thoughts were interrupted by the feeling of a firm, determined hand gripping my third leg. I jumped back like before and turned to Leh'Hah, who had on the same sneer-grimace I saw last time. Ultimately, I didn't feel good about abandoning a loop to failure, but I needed to do just a little investigative work first.

"In any case..." Leh'hah eventually said, but I held up a hand to interrupt him.

"Take us to the inn, then leave," I said. I could have been more polite, but I didn't really have any fucks to give when it came to keeping up appearances in a soon-to-be-doomed timeline.

The same song and dance happened as last time, with everyone gathering in the same room in the same inn.

"Explain yourself," Rose immediately said once the door was shut. "What's going on?"

"Codeword: Frosty Bitch."

Rose arched an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

OK, I needed to give a little bit more explanation than that. She wouldn't even voice her suspicions without a stronger basis than me vaguely hinting at the direction of her soul-seared memories.

"Your suspicions are correct. I have to go do something. You can update Hilda if you want, or not," I said. Honestly, even talking like that made me feel a little shitty. The second I thought of a loop as doomed, everyone in it felt like they ceased to really be people, or matter at all. They were just dolls for me to manipulate before looping back in time. I didn't like it. Hopefully this was the last time I ever had to give up on a loop from the very beginning.

"Can we not accompany you?" she asked.

"I think my target will get flighty if we show up as a group. Not trying to be cocky or dismiss the value of teamwork here, but I think me going in-and-out real fast on my own will be a lot more efficient."

"Okay," Hilda interjected. "We understand. Go on and do what needs to be done. We'll hold down the fort."

I pointed at her. "I won't stop you from Soul Spying me, because I can't, but please don't masturbate and try to mark my bed with your scent while doing it. I won't be able to focus if I know you're doing that."

Hilda avoided eye contact. That wasn't a promise.

"And you," I continued, turning to Rose. "Stop her. Don't watch over her shoulder."

Rose avoided eye contact. That wasn't a promise.

I threw my hands up in the air. "Please? Can neither of you contain yourselves?"

"I take offense to that framing," Rose said. "There is nothing being contained or uncontained here. It is simply of the essence that we keep an eye on you and stay up to date with proceedings. What Hilda elects to do while this reconnaissance is performed is outside of my control. Believe me, I am on your side here, but I know when to cut my losses."

"That sounds like excuses to me."

"Do you think I want to strain my ears to hear your conversations while attempting to ignore the beastly grunts and moans right in front of my face? Do you think I want to repeatedly shift positions to maintain sight of the screen while her bodily convulsions and mountains of flesh conspire to block my view? No. It is not a pleasant experience for me. But I do not want to stir the beast and have my hand bitten off."

"I would bite her hand off. For sure," Hilda chimed in.

"Why are neither of you embarrassed by this conversation...?"

"There's no such thing as shame when true love is involved," Hilda said firmly.

"You have a point. OK. We can talk about this later. I have to go."

Hilda waved and Rose nodded, like usual. I left the room, walked loudly down the hall, waited a few minutes, then crept back to the room and threw the door open. Hilda was already naked and preparing the Soul Spy while laying on my bed. Rose had pulled a chair over to sit nearby. They both looked at me and froze.

"Seriously?!" I exclaimed. "Not even five minutes?!"

"I tried to stop her," Rose said dryly, making no attempt to sound believable.

I pointed at Hilda. "You're lucky this is a doomed loop."

"Oh yes. Punish me, baby," she said with a wink that made her naked boobs jiggle. It really was bewitching how utterly pale they were, and how thoroughly they contrasted with her black hair. I found myself staring at them, imagining what it would be like to use them as water beds. "Like what you see?"

I turned. "You'll pay for this once all this elf business is settled," I said, and with that I left for real.

Let me make it clear: By this point, it was a foregone conclusion that Hilda and I were going to fuck. My reservations were gone, there was love in my heart, and her legs were spread and waiting. However, I still had scruples at the thought of having our first time in a soon to be erased loop. Our first time would have to wait until this elf business was well and thoroughly settled. Let it be known that I was no beta anime harem MC. I studied philosophy, and to this day recalled René Descartes's most important philosophical lesson: Give her the dick.

I will, René Descartes. By god, I will give her the dick. But later.

For now, I had a date with a fat-assed dark elf who would probably try to unleash her murderous assassin skills upon me if I played my cards wrong. To be honest, I wasn't feeling very tense. The loop was kind of corrupting my sensibilities here. After failing to save Soh'fia so many times in quick succession, it was hard to take things too seriously. It was hard not to just think "yeah whatever I can just loop back." The temptation to just succumb and exploit the loop, at the cost of dehumanizing everyone I knew now and forever, was just so immense. Succeeding was paramount not only so I could continue my quest, but so I could finish this without becoming an inhuman monster.

Anyway. I reached Dak'muc's Magic Emporium. It felt odd that I recalled its exact location so well, but then again, surely my INT stat going up had to mean something other than increased magic power or whatever. I climbed up the stairs just like the first time, and there she was.

"Welcome," she said. Her hair was the same silver as always, contrasting nicely against creamy dark skin. Her assassin robes covered her entire body in pitch black, but here she was wearing the same armor as before, which covered her torso but left her ample cleavage and sizable ass completely exposed. Slutty elves and their slutty fashion sense.

"Bad news from Bah'loh'kah. Can we talk in private?" I asked.

Her eyes instantly narrowed. A chill ran through the air, as if the entire room had gotten colder by multiple degrees. Her look wasn't quite murderous, but she was giving me an intent stare as she took a measure of me.

She muttered a chant, then spoke. "What are you trying to pull, human?"

"I'm not following. We just need to talk."

"Who sent you?" she asked.

"What did I just say?" I asked.

"Humor me."

I paused. She wanted me to repeat his name again... why? Suddenly, it hit me. Lie Detection. Mysticism had a lie detection spell, and she had probably muttered it under her breath just now. She was baiting me into telling a lie. I had two choices here: trick her lie detection, or just admit defeat and try to play it safe. As far as I could tell, I might as well try to keep up the act for as long as possible. No reason to give up early.

"There's a problem with the plan tonight. It's been found out. Your services might be needed tonight more than ever."

She gave me a hard look and gestured me to a side room. Once we were there, she turned. "Who sent you?" she asked again. It seemed I wouldn't be able to dodge around giving some kind of answer. I could guess that Mystics were used to asking questions with explicit answers to force people into lies.

"Okay, I admit, it wasn't Bah'loh'kah exactly. Leh'hah told me where to go," I said, throwing up my hands.

There was a pause.

"Why would they ever involve a human in this?" she finally asked. I doubted she trusted me, but when you had constant lie detection on someone, it was easier to go along with things.

"I wouldn't say they really wanted a human to get involved, but well, here I am. First of all, they want to know if the tree elf is ready to go," I said. I was pretty sure that last bit wasn't a lie; surely they did want to know if the elf was ready to go.

Dakka glanced downwards. "Tra'lea is fine. What, is that just a thinly veiled threat? Tell them we know the deal. We do this, they keep quiet."

SHE DOES HAVE A TREE ELF LOCKED IN THE BASEMENT?!

Mother fucker. They were participating in this deal just to hide their illicit Nature Magic lessons or whatever. That explained why Soh'fia was so baffled by a dark elf and tree elf working together. They weren't even involved in the political factions, they were just randos being blackmailed. It seemed she was so stuck looking in the greater picture of politics it just didn't occur to her that someone would blackmail powerful black market assassins.

Okay, it was all coming together. Dakka was tactically avoid giving any concrete details on the assassination itself, but since I already knew how to fill in the gaps, that didn't really mean much. Bah'loh'kah, the high elf councilman, wanted Soh'fia dead for some reason. He found a dark elf assassin with a weakness and blackmailed her into it. His plan was very thorough with three layers: a dark elf raid at night, a treesung dagger made from the bed, and finally, poison if the previous two failed. I didn't have all the details; maybe he only called on Dakka if I showed up, maybe the treesinger never did the stabby thing if I didn't block Dakka from killing her, etc, but that seemed about right to me.

The question, then, was how to make the elves believe this at lunch, and furthermore, figure out why Bah'loh'kah wanted her dead at all. The "why" of a murder mystery was rarely relevant in practical terms, especially if you knew the culprit already, but it generally helped put things into picture.

It occurred to me, suddenly, why Bah'loh'kah was going for Dak'muc and her treefriend specifically. It was just like Soh'fia had said. There were politics at play here. One only had to look at the layers of the plan to put the pieces together. He wanted to blame the dark elves the most, so Dakka went first. He wanted to blame the tree elves the second-most, so if she failed, the tree elf would go next. And finally, if both of them failed, some nondescript poison would kill her off, and he would just play his cards so nobody would find out who did the poisoning. It was political suicide for the dark elves or tree elves to try to pull this assassination, so Bah'loh'kah was trying to kill two birds with one stone: the princess, and his political opponents. It seemed stupidly basic, but consider how often news articles like "Member of X group killed important Y person!" get blown up. The scandalous nature of the criminal's background overwhelmed the suspicion behind their motivations and backers. Elf politicians would know it was bullshit, but not the greater populace.

Maybe. I wasn't an expert on elf politics. Soh'fia just ranted about them a lot, so I had kind of absorbed some of it.

"Hello? Human?" came a call. I snapped back to reality and saw Dakka eyeing me suspiciously. She had at some point moved to be standing right in front of me; she was about a head shorter than me, which meant I was stuck looking down and invariably getting a face-full of delicious brown cleavage. It was hard to do subterfuge and delicate spy work when elves were basically in a constant state of unconsciously trying to seduce humans. I was getting really tired of slutty elves by this point. Why hadn't they been the pure, chaste beings of my dreams?

"Right. Well, I'm going to change the subject dramatically," I said. I wasn't going to get any more meaningful information from tiptoeing around shit. "What would it take for you to betray Bah'loh'kah and expose his plot?"

The dagger came swift and right for my neck. I leaned back to dodge it and sent an elbow to her throat, but she had already jumped back with three daggers between her fingers, which she threw at me. I dodged all of them, then dodged again; as expected, one of them came flying back like a boomerang. I caught it in the air and threw it at her foot, and she slid to the side to dodge it, only for me to telekinetically shift it to the side so it still pierced her foot. She let out a cry and I dashed forward to close the distance. She pulled the dagger out in time for me to elbow her onto the ground. She fell to her knees, likely dizzy from pain (and perhaps poison from her own dagger), and I finished the job by stomping on the back of her plate armor. Once she was completely on the ground, I pressed a knee on her back and gripped the back of her head with my hand to keep it face down.

"So. What would it take for you to betray Bah'loh'kah and expose his plot?"

"Do what you're going to do!" she barked. "You won't break me!"

"I'm not really looking to do any torture here. That'd give me a bad taste in my mouth."

"I knew this was going to happen the second a human walked through the door! Just get it over with!"

"Again, I don't want to torture you. Just tell me what I want to know."

"Stop playing dumb!" She said angrily. She was panting now, and even her creamy brown cheeks were visibly flushed. "Just do it. Get it over with. Now. Go."

"Wh... What?"

She wiggled her hips. "Do it! Go!"

I froze. I slowly, slowly turned my neck and looked beneath me. A stream of juices was flowing out of the crotch of her armor, pushing through the cracks to form an increasingly large pool beneath her.

"Oh my fucking god. Elves! Why are you all like this?!"

"And now you show your racism! Disgusting. Humans are all alike. They see us elves as nothing but sex objects. Well, get on with it then! Use me!"

"I don't... Just... Just tell me."

"I'll never break without torture."

I honestly wanted to cry.

After a moment, a sense of overwhelming defeat consumed me. I stood up, sat down on a nearby chair, and rested a hand on my forehead. This was exhausting. The elf capital was exhausting. I just wanted peace from horny elves.

I heard the clink of armor as she stood up, but I didn't even have the energy to stop her. If this was a psychological attack, she had defeated me. My spirit was broken. Come swiftly, death. I will figure out what to do next loop.

But instead, I just heard more clinking, and some rustling. It went on long enough that I finally looked up, just in time to see Dakka walking this way on her knees, completely topless. Her creamy brown boobs spilled out from chest, completely free from armor, which allowed me to see the bright pink areolas and her rock-hard nipples at their tips. A gleaming trail of juices traced back from where she was now to her pile of discarded armor. Upon reaching me in my chair, she instantly began going for the belt of my pants.

"Stop," I said, pressing a hand against her head and holding her back from burying it into my crotch. "Why are you doing this?"

"Do you mock me, human scum? You would make me defenseless, interrogate me for information, and then ask me why I submit to your torture? Disgusting. The cruelty of your species will never cease to astound me."

"What?"

"You humans know we elves would never willingly suck on one of your succulent, delicious meat rods. The only way to bed with an elf is through torture or force; and thus, you resort to these despicable means to get what you want."

"I don't want a blowjob."

She paused. "Handjob?" she asked, making the motions in the air.

"No."

"Boobjob?" She lifted up her sizable boobs.

"No."

She frowned. "What do you want, then?"

"Information."

"Exactly! Hence the torture."

"No. We can skip this part."

She gave me an utterly confused look, then pointed at herself, mimicked sucking a dick, and pointed at me; as if I simply wasn't understanding what she was offering.

"Okay, look. I was going into this with the assumption you had a complex backstory. That you had complex motivations for going through with this assassination. I assumed there was some crucial aspect of your life I would need to understand to immediately convince you to help me in the future. Like, 'Oh they have my brother imprisoned, just tell me you'll help me save him and I'll immediately trust you completely' or something. Is that wrong? Do I just need to burst into your store, say 'Come with me if you want to get fucked,' and then you'll follow my lead? Is that really what's happening now?"

"You've lost me a bit, but probably, yes."

"Oh my fucking god."

My head was getting dizzy. I had walked into Koh'rin ignorant of the world, and now I was paying the price. Why hadn't Rose's lectures included a warning about elves being so debilitatingly cock-obsessed? I went into this mystery with good faith and tried to solve it. I didn't give up and try to kidnap Soh'fia. I didn't cut up prostitutes like Jack the Ripper to buff my Restoration stat. I didn't go ballistic and try to beat up a councilman until he spilled the beans. I earned clues through trial and error, pieced them together like a good citizen, and solved things in good faith. But in the end, at every turn, I was being slapped in the face with horny elves. Punished for trying anything but exploiting their inconsolable obsession with human dick. "Just go to the Dark Elf from loop one and wave your dick in front of her face until she tells you everything!" was not how things worked. It wasn't how things should work. But reality was laughing in my face.

I idly wondered what Hilda and Rose were thinking right now. Was this like getting cucked to them? Was Hilda furiously speeding up her masturbation as she waited with baited breath to see if I lost to the dark elf temptress? Was Rose just watching on with a slight frown, her inscrutable thoughts completely beyond my knowing? Honestly, the biggest negative to going through with "torturing" Dakka would just be the vague guilt at doing so while knowing my two companions were watching with concern from so far away. (Despite the background of torture, "consent" was not even a question here. Nobody has ever consented as hard as Dakka was consenting right now. It was difficult to even imagine a scenario in which an elf of this god-forsaken city didn't give consent, though there were surely some.)

I sighed. "Is there any way I can convince you to tell me what you know before torture?"

"Never. I shall not yield before you start torturing me," she said defiantly with narrowed eyes, which would have been slightly more heroic if she hadn't implicitly implied she would yield the instant I started, and if she weren't actively straining against my hand to bury her face in my crotch.

"Fine. You, too, will pay for this." I flicked her forehead, and prepared to quickload away. I had confirmed my suspicions and knew how to get Dakka to follow me to the lunch (probably). All the pieces were in place. The only questions left were whether I could reach the lunch in time with everyone, and what would happen after I dropped the bombshell, but both of those would be answered soon enough.

Oh, and Dakka was getting fucked too. I was holding off now out of respect for Hilda and also not fucking someone in a dead loop, but that wouldn't fly next loop. At this point I had to assume that "Come with me if you want to get fucked" would end up being like a sacred oath to elf women, and she would slit my throat if I tried to back out of it. How was this even happening? How was this even real? My last salvation was the desperate hope that she would actually leave after we were done, which was how you knew things were getting bad.

"Quickload," I said, giving one last look at Dakka's pink nipples and supple brown boobs. Well, maybe things weren't so bad after all.