Back to the meeting room. Rose, Sophia, and Daiya stood up as expected, but I gestured for them to sit back down. This was going to be a short loop used for gathering information then thrown away; we needed to talk, but with only like thirty to sixty minutes before a princess probably died, it would be smart to just quickload after talking.

"Did any of you three die?" I asked before anything. Hilda and Medea turned their faces to look at me with confusion, but I ignored them for now. Again, not really too much of a point in being too accommodating to their lack of information when the loop was going to mind-wipe them anyway.

Rose, Sophia, and Daiya all shook their heads. Okay, that more or less confirmed that it was the Demon Princess who died, though I was relying a bit on extrapolation here. My quest was to gather the Five, and I really didn't think six extraneous beastkin princesses would be included in that. If they weren't, then the Beastkin Kingdom surprisingly didn't matter too much in this loop; we just needed Flare to survive, and the rest of the empire could crumble for all we cared.

Or maybe that's what I would have said at the start of this journey.

Each of those beastkin princesses was a mini-Jeffrey. The loop all but invited me to step upon their corpses like a stairway to a glorious future, but that wasn't me anymore. I cared. I cared a lot. Empathy and emotions oozed out of my every pore. Perhaps it would be disrespectful to Jeffrey to suddenly develop empathy. But I didn't care. I was gonna crash out of this loop with everyone alive. No compromises! It would be a perfect run, minus one, or possibly two. It depended on how much you cared about the elf dude.

With that established, I wasn't actually entirely sure about how to make that happen. Demon armies attacked all seven countries in the Beastkin Empire at once, and there was no way whatsoever for me to save them all at once. I just couldn't be everywhere at once. Really, that was the crucial element which kept all overpowered protagonists down to earth; short of literally being able to clone equally strong versions of yourself, other people would always be a factor. You could cultivate your own strength to infinite, but other people would always be there, and they always mattered. Life wasn't as simple as grinding yourself to max power and then attempting to use personal strength to solve all problems. Sometimes, demons invaded an entire continent at once, and you couldn't personally save seven different princesses at once. Personal relationships mattered. Personal connections mattered. Being able to be a leader of men mattered.

I would do the best I could, though.

"Okay. We need to find the demon princess. Do we know where she is?"

Rose nodded. "I believe in the first loop there were reports of her invading Koh'rin. Her reason for choosing there over Penndrack is unknown, however."

"Hmm." I drummed my fingers on the table, ignoring the explosions outside and the entire palace shaking. "If we assume this entire invasion is about killing the Five, maybe Xetrathia and Aeneas chose to lead the charge in the two countries with the most vulnerable princesses. The Beastkin Empire was apparently on the verge of crumbling from internal collapse, and had seven possible candidates ripe for the picking. Dwarven Gems, on the other hand, are incredibly powerful, and Penndrack City is a veritable fortress with plenty of manpower on stock at all times. That leaves the Elvish city of Koh'rin as the most appealing choice."

Sophia frowned. "But I'm not even there. Are they dumb?"

I shrugged. "They probably don't know where we are, exactly. With the teleporter system, we could be anywhere. And who knows how Koh'rin is covering for their princess going on a globetrotting adventure with a human? Maybe they're acting like you're still there."

She wrinkled her nose, but didn't say anything else. It was our fault for not being more thorough about this kind of thing.

"Anyway. I guess we have a rough plan for next loop. Rose, Sophia, go to the Beastkin Kingdom and see if you can save Flare on your own. She probably will be acting differently from last time due to her love point memories. Daiya, guard the dwarf hold like usual. I'll go to Koh'rin and confirm that the demon princess is there."

They nodded. I could loop now, but there was one last thing I wanted to check.

"Medea."

She turned to look at me with a peaceful, warm smile. "Yes, my love?"

"Did you systemically corrupt the Beastkin Empire from the inside for years before casting a blight upon every race in hopes of destroying the beastkin for good?"

Her smile froze, and she avoided eye contact.

"Medea," I said firmly.

"I might have done something of the sort," she replied evasively.

"And why didn't you tell me?"

Tears brimmed in her beautiful blue eyes. She blinked them away, and stared at the floor in despair. The answer was clear: upon knowing of my loop and objectives, she thought telling me would delay her getting dicked even longer. It might have even driven a wedge between us for good. She had worked for years as a cultist in hopes of building an ideal world for us, and nothing would devastate her more than being denied the future serving as my wife that she had yearned for so desperately.

Luckily for her, I was a believer in second chances. We all made mistakes, and far be it from me to say that I wouldn't have possibly done the same thing in Medea's position. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone," as I always say, and I doubted anyone could really fairly judge Medea for causing untold suffering on a massive scale with scars that would last for generations. We all committed our little sins; white lies here and there, stealing a bit of pudding or cake from our siblings, etc. The question was never "how do I punish them for their transgressions?". It was always "Now that it's happened, how do we move forward?". Rehabilitation, not punishment.

Punishments could serve as good motivation for rehabilitation, however.

I pointed at Medea. "I have a punishment in mind, but it can wait until this mess is over, so you'll actually remember it."

She wilted, and nodded sadly. I was looking forward to how she would react to the punishment itself. It would be a 'heaven and hell' kind of situation, perfect for a priestess such as herself. I could only hope that the millions of dead and/or diseased beastkin would find it a suitable punishment as well.

Anyway, that was that. Meeting session over. Time to reset.

"Quickload," I said.

It was funny to load back to just five minutes ago, but hey. It was the practical thing to do. Maybe in the past I would have hesitated more, but fuck it, I had looped like two hundred times in the dwarf hell dungeon. I wasn't about to pussyfoot around doing one extraneous loop.

As per usual, the babe trio of fellow loopers stood up immediately to do their tasks. Daiya opened up a wall, while Rose and Sophia started jogging out of the room. I caught Rose's shoulder; she looked at me with a questioning look, and I answered by kissing her on the lips. It was a brief kiss, but she flashed a smile once I pulled back. Sophia scowled and decided to prioritize pride in front of the others over making out with me as well, if only to keep up the act.

On my way out I glanced back at the table, where Medea and Hilda were blinking in stunned confusion. Really, I just didn't really know what to do with them. Maybe if Rose and Sophia needed the help of two cursed mages they could follow them to the Beastkin Empire. (It wasn't like Medea would have the time to undo years of corruption across an entire empire in thirty minutes).

I jogged to the teleporter to Koh'rin; it wasn't in the same direction as the teleporter to the dragon capital. I didn't know the exact logic behind teleportation magic, but I knew it had something to do with connected leylines running through the earth. It didn't really make much of a difference here excluding the fact that I couldn't just run to the teleporter along with Rose and Sophia.

Along the way, I considered what to do with Princess Xetrathia. The most immediate and obvious solution seemed to be beating her in a fight and detaining her to secure her safety, so finding her in Koh'rin was priority one. Priority two was interrogating her to figure out the nature of the invasion to see if there was anything that could be done. Maybe I could save all the beastkin princesses by finding the Excursed and cutting them down or something. Though maybe Aeneas would be more pliable, if I could find him again.

Anyway, I reached the teleporter amid all the shaking. Go time.

Zwoop.

The stone walls distorted with a flash, and when I could see again I was in the same teleporter room I had left Koh'rin from all that time ago. The wooden decor and smell of nature filled me with a sense of nostalgia. It took about a month real-time of living in a dark, damp dwarf hold to really appreciate what a paradise Koh'rin was. Maybe this was where I would choose to settle down once all this prophecy business was over. I would even have free access to over a thousand horny, sexy elves, which was nothing but a plus in my book. God, I loved horny elves.

I jogged out of the palace, unmolested by guards due to the fact the Eternal Tree seemed to be ablaze and everyone was understandably more concerned with saving their sacred tree than interrogating me. I found a nearby window facing the entry of the city, smashed it, and poked my head out.

Yeah, Koh'rin was well and truly fucked. The problem with centering your architecture around trees is that you really opened yourself up to disaster when fires struck. There were hordes of orcs here, too, and the telltale red dots marking demon commanders. I squinted and saw, far off in the distance, a larger contingent of pure red marching this way. Was that her? Aeneas had been with a platoon of thirty or so demons. It would make sense for the princess to have a full contingent of soldiers. I jumped out of the window, soaring through the air before landing onto the soft grass below. I would never get tired of that. Nothing screamed power like spitting in the face of gravity and fall damage.

I stretched for a bit, then began jogging to where I had seen the larger contingent of demon soldiers. If she was as strong as Aeneas, I wasn't really concerned ab—

The dart hit me in the neck. Apparently not even my END was enough to stop the metal tip from piercing my skin. Well, fuck.

I collapsed forward, unconscious.

I woke up in a familiar-looking room with metal bars marking it as a cell for imprisoning people. My arms and legs were shackled to the walls, such that I was essentially crucified upon it, though not so high that my feet didn't touch the floor. I was stuck in place, completely unable to move. I strained against the shackles, and these were far too strong to just break through; I was pinned against the wall, unable to move even an inch. Luckily, I could still quickload, so I wasn't really stuck, but I didn't want to load back if I didn't have to. I needed to wait as long as possible so Rose and Sophia could gather info.

I looked around to get my bearings. First and foremost, I was completely naked, which I kind of expected. It didn't really bother me; I spent more time naked and fucking than clothed as of late, and it wasn't like I had accumulated a vast store of repertoire of powerful magic artifacts. It was just some basic-ass steel armor and a sword. Worst come to worst, I could just start impromptu grinding my Unarmored skill for a loop, whatever.

The more concerning thing was the tree elf casually reading a book on the other side of the bars. He... He seemed familiar. T-Teacher?

"Is that you, o wise teacher?" I called, having forgotten his name.

He looked up from his book and glanced at me. "I warned you about her."

I groaned. Of course. It was her.

"Can you do me a favor and free me? I'm not actually in any danger here, but I have shit to do."

"No thanks. I don't want to join you over there." He went back to his book. To be fair, he had warned me.

The door to the room opened and Dakka strode in, wearing nothing but white, lacy underwear that stood out brilliantly against her creamy brown skin. She marched into the cell, sizable boobs bouncing freely, and then glared at me. "You thought you could get away that easily? You thought you could just leave and forget me?"

I shrugged as best I could in the shackles. "To be honest, I wasn't really thinking about you at all."

She scowled. "I didn't know where you went, or how long you would stay there, but I knew you would come back. Soh'fia had to return to Koh'rin at some point. So I staked out the palace while sating my lust through violence, waiting for your return. Be glad you were only gone for a week. I almost lost my patience."

It occurred to me that the elvish serial killer Rose had mentioned in passing might actually have been Dakka murdering a bunch of elvish dudes to blow off steam. I could only pray that I was not indirectly culpable for that. Maybe it was a kind of trolley problem esque situation where my chastity was on one side of the tracks and several hundred elvish dudes were on the other. Luckily, trolley problems were unsolvable philosophical problems, which meant I couldn't be blamed or punished for Dakka pulling the lever.

Anyway, whatever patience she had clearly dried out the instance she had me here. Sparing no further time to talk, she pressed her lips against my in a hungry kiss, devouring my lips and half of my face in the process. She gripped my mostly un-erect dick between her massive, toned thighs and started dry humping my hips to get me erect. I contemplated this situation.

First and foremost, to emphasize, I really did not consider this rape. Not to make a statement about rape overall, nor to rationalize away what was happening; it was just the simple reality that living in such a sex-charged world really kind of dulled my senses to this kind of thing. Women pulling out all the stops to fuck me was basically a fact of life now, and my own brain was so sex-addled by now that I more than welcomed a thick as hell dark elf so desperate to fuck me that she would actually go so far as to shackle me to the wall. This was, all things considered, a situation I primarily had positive feelings for. I wasn't about to complain about a total babe like Dakka pushing her heavy boobs against my chest while furiously kissing me, even if I was shackled to the wall. Karma would surely punish me if I did.

However, like I said, I had shit to do. It dawned on me that the primary obstacle to this loop really was my horny as fuck harem. I was overpowered now, thanks to the dungeon, and given that this was an all-out demon invasion, there really wasn't much of a mystery to solve. The only thing stopping me from strutting around and getting shit done was all the women constantly trying to divert the plot into sex.

Was this allegorical? Dakka's furious dry humping really felt symbolic to me. It became impossible to just get shit done when everyone was so horny. Everything just broke down. It was so bad now that I had deadly ninja assassins camping out for weeks to ambush and fuck me the moment I let my guard down. I had to blackmail Medea, restrain Daiya with promises, resist Sophia's dry humping (putting aside her regularly scheduled triple blowjobs), and play a battle of wits with Rose. It had seemed like Rose backed down about the whole "exploit the loop to fuck forever" thing, but I knew her. She was plotting out ways to get around my determination to finish this fast. Why risk an eternity of sex and love that was all but guaranteed by time powers? It wouldn't be long before she came to me with some grinding strategy that just happened to involve us traveling to some distant cabin and training together for a thousand loops or something. "I believe this is quite necessary," she would say.

To be fair, I thought while ignoring Dakka sliding off her soaked panties to thigh fuck my increasingly erect dick directly with her wet pussy slit, it's not like this was an actual problem. Sex was not a problem. It was distracting, sure, and maybe in the past I would have been wringing my hands over my sense of chastity or something, but I had gone through many constructive therapy sessions with Rose over the past week. I understood now that sex was healthy and normal. There was no reason for me to react so dramatically every time an assassin knocked me out to shackle me a wall for sex.

I looked down at Dakka. Her brown cheeks were flushed, and her scowl had been completely replaced with a loving expression as she continued the passionate kiss I was ignoring. Her white, lacy bra had fallen off one shoulder, revealing the painfully hard pink nipple jabbing out of her boob and digging into my bare, muscular chest as she pushed herself against me. The wet squishing sound of her thigh-fucking filled the air; her pussy was gushing so much juices that her slick inner thighs might as well have been slip-and-slides.

You know what, yeah. I was fine with this.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

My dick was now fully erect. Dakka pulled her head back, licking her lips, and then turned to bend over. She lifted her ass high, and then slammed it against my dick. By chance or fate it was her wrinkly anus that landed on my dick; the massive girth of my dick stretched her intestinal walls as it dug into her ass, causing her to gasp with pleasure. I wasn't sure if this had been entirely intentional or not, but there was no going back now that my dick was in her ass, and she certainly didn't seem about to stop.

She began slamming her ass back and forth, moving kind of like a bucking bull in front of me since I was completely immobile. I stood there as her jiggly ass flattened against my hips then bounced back off. If I had a free hand I probably would have slapped it, but I didn't really care to try busting through the shackles again. Instead, I just twisted my hips to the best of my ability, turning my dick into a drill that dug deeper and deeper into her rapidly softening insides as she kept up her ass pounding.

I had to say, this felt surprisingly great. There was just something about elves and their fat, perfect asses. Her anus gripped by shaft far tighter than any pussy lips could, scraping along my shaft with each bounce of her ass, and her intestines were like the soft stomach of a coiled snake becoming increasingly uncoiled through vigorous pounding. Even her fat ass cheeks were squeezing softly around my dick to add to the sensation with each pound. Anal was good in an entirely different way from normal sex.

Dakka, for her part, was moaning and groaning increasingly loud. Each time she pounded her ass against me, soft ass flattening against me from the sheer force, a spray of juices squirted out of her pussy like a water gun. My legs were getting more soaked than they would in a literal shower. It was hard to see her pussy, but the glimpses I got amid her pounding showed her pussy lips flapping opened and closed hungrily. I could only imagine how hard her pussy was aching for a cock of its own; maybe that was what drove her to pound her ass against me so thoroughly.

I glanced at the tree elf. He was wrinkling his nose, annoyed by the loud slapping sounds and Dakka's incessant groaning, but he politely remained focused on his book. He probably would have left if it wasn't for him being shackled to the ground by the table. Thinking about it, Dakka was pretty fucked up. I resolved to free the tree elf once all this invasion business was settled. I would pick up Dakka on the way and toss her into the harem pile to stop her serial killer ways as well. All in all, it would be a perfect solution that made everyone happy; I was a bit hesitant to add to the harem pile, but as they say, the harem pile doesn't stop from getting taller. It was out of my hands.

I enjoyed the ass-fucking for a bit, but I had shit to do, and I wasn't talking about her ass there. The prophecy-is-fucked message hadn't popped up yet, and I presume it would have waited for me to wake up before disappearing, so I could still salvage this loop. I just had to get out of Dakka's basement.

I opted to cum on command and hope that settled things. Dakka felt my dick expanding in her ass and, groaning happily, stopped her ass-bouncing to just press her huge ass against me as hard as possible, hoping to get my cum as deep inside of her as possible, even if there wasn't a womb waiting at the end of her intestines. She wiggled to really dig her ass in, and the smoothness of her skin mixed with her intestinal walls rubbing against me pushed me over the edge. I came like a hose, shooting thick ropes deep into her ass-pussy. She moaned in pleasure and shuddered beneath me, orgasming each time a new rope shot out and hit her insides. But I didn't stop cumming, and eventually she had cum so many times and orgasmed so hard that she fell forward onto the ground, my dick slipping out of her ass. I kept spraying out cum like a fountain, covering her back in a thick layer of cum. The white stood out beautifully against her brown skin, and in that moment, I was Vincent van Gogh, painting my Starry Night in cum on the back of a slutty dark elf.

The flood eventually stopped, though, and she grunted on the ground, twitching just like I remembered. But I had a secret weapon; I knew from Sophia exactly how to wake elves up from their post-sex stupor and get them back on their feet. Or their knees, anyway.

"Hey, whaddaya think you're doing, slut?" I called, voice radiating chadness. "Suck it clean."

It worked exactly as expected. Dakka's unfocused eyes glimmered with thought, briefly, and she wavered up before falling to her knees. She slumped forward, enveloping my cock with her mouth and bobbing her head while licking it all over. The only thing elves loved as much as sex was clean-up blowjobs, even if those blowjobs were coming directly after some anal sex.

The dumb, clouded look in her eyes kind of worried me though. I got the feeling she was going to flop back down onto the ground once she was satisfied. I needed to do something to ensure... ah.

"Mesudorei ni nare," I chanted. Dominate Beast. I wasn't sure if it would work on normal Dakka, but right now? Yeah. The magic coursed through my dick and raced through her tightened lips to reach her lower stomach. Juices sprayed from her pussy as her womb felt the magic enslaving her, and soon enough there was a heart-shaped tattoo for all to see on her stomach. It wasn't a permanent thing, due to the loop, but would do for my purposes here.

"Unshackle me when you're done," I ordered, then leaned back against the wall as she let out a groan of assent. It was funny to me how Dominate Beast had quickly become my most useful and relevant spell. Sophia had taught it to me exclusively for her own purposes, but it had ended up becoming a surprisingly large boon. Both for practical purposes, and erotic purposes. The pink glow of Dakka's womb tattoo really took her cleanup blowjob to another level.

When Dakka was done and finished unshackling me, she fell back into the pool of cum and juices that we had made on the floor. She made no move to do anything except twitch and scoop up cum to eat whenever she ran out, moaning while half-conscious. I stepped on her toned stomach on my way out, and juices that had built up in her pussy sprayed out from the pressure. Yeah, she would make a nice addition to the harem. God, I loved slutty elves.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The tree elf gave me a slight nod as I walked to the door. "My sympathies," he said.

I paused to look back at him. 'My sympathies.' Hah. This guy understood how hard it was to mana a slutty dark elf.

I gave him a slight nod back. "I'll get you out of here," I said, and left it at that. He didn't need to know when, or how. A vow between men had been made, and I would see it held. There would be no second Jeffries.

I climbed the stairs, and was about to leave through the front door, before I remembered I was naked. It was easy to forget at times that being naked was not normal. Wearing clothes felt odd to me sometimes, like I was just putting on wastes of time that would make it harder to strip for sex, but I wasn't about to turn into a streaker for no reason. I dropped by Dakka's room to look for my equipment, and discovered the reason she hadn't been in the basement when I woke up. My armor was decorating her walls, and she had made a shrine to my underwear and all the rest of my clothes that had my smell on them. There were actual ritual candles around them, and a small pillow for praying in front of them, or something.

No reason to think too hard about it. I grabbed my clothes, destroying the shrine, and swiftly got dressed. The armor went back on too; no point leaving them up there. It hit me that Dakka had planned to keep me in the basement forever, but those were thoughts she had when her brain wasn't clouded by sex. I suspected that she would have unshackled me in an instant when horny if I just said something about how it would be easier to fuck her harder with more freedom or something. It didn't really matter.

I emerged from Dakka's tree into what more or less seemed like actual hell. Fire was everywhere, as well as elf corpses. The orcs and demons had thoroughly slaughtered them; the elves had been weakened by the death of one of their councilmen, and their Goddess shield crumbling sealed the deal. A massive army supported with an absurd number of summons was just too much for them.

I jogged to the Eternal Tree. If Xetrathia was anywhere, she would probably be there at the palace, looking for Sophia or another prophesized heroine. I did my best to ignore the death and destruction along the way. It would all be undo'd soon enough, and there was no point waxing poetic about it. On the bright side, more than thirty minutes had clearly passed here; this was as good as proof that Flare remembered enough about Aeneas and me to not just run to her horde where she would meet a swift death. Thank god for love points. (Or maybe Rose and Sophia just got there in time; I'd have to ask when I got back).

Anyway, my suspicions were soon proven correct. I reached the Eternal Tree and found Princess Xetrathia.

She was wearing heroic-looking white plate armor with gold decoration just like Aeneas's. The helmet was off as she stared up at the burning tree with a frown, revealing silvery hair and, most surprising of all, thick-rimmed rectangular glasses. But don't take that to mean she was bookish or nerdy looking. There was not going to be a 'transformation' where she removed the glasses and looked beautiful, because she was already stunning. Her smooth, red skin accentuated a shockingly pretty face, and her flowing silver hair was interrupted only by two curved, black goat horns (which her helmet had holes to accommodate). I couldn't see her figure, but she was clearly hot as fuck, and the thick-rimmed rectangular glasses just served to give her an intellectual air. She was looking up at the tree with calculating eyes and a deepset frown, as if questioning whether Sophia had been in there and their mission had been successful.

Well, no point to leave her in suspense.

"She's not there," I called from behind. She whirled around; there was no contingent of demons around her. It occurred to me that she might have been trying to bait me or a princess out, in which case she had been completely successful.

She narrowed her eyes at me and did some calculations in her head. "Heir," she finally hissed.

I shot finger-guns at her. "The one and only."

All things considered, it was a fairly dramatic meeting; fires burned all around us, with the Eternal Tree's towering flames serving as a powerful backdrop. I was her archenemy, it seemed, and she was my final conquest. Fate had worked for a thousand years to put us here together.

She pointed her a demonic-looking scythe at me at me. "I will not be yours. The prophecy will be broken."

I smiled. "That in love with Aeneas?"

She faltered, as if not having expected to hear that name or accusation from my mouth, but quickly steeled herself. "The prophecy is the heart of the Goddess's evil. It cannot be allowed to come true. The world will end, and nothing will be the same." Her hard look softened, ever so slightly. "If you have a heart, leave and never return. Leave the world in peace."

I gestured at the flames around us. "Is this peace?"

"Koh'rin will recover in years at best, or decades at worst. The world will never recover from you and the Goddess. It is a necessary evil."

I rolled that phrase around in my mouth. A necessary evil. The classic fallback for one looking to moralize their actions, to maintain a moral code while bending it, or alternatively, to put a moral code above all other considerations: 'the ends justify the means,' a favored quote among villains throughout history. Either way, it seemed Aeneas and her were on the exact same wavelength here. How cute.

I spread my arms dramatically, flaming tree branches falling behind me. "I hate to break it to you, but you can't win. I'm bound by fate and the Goddess. She won't let me run, no more so than she will let you run. We're in this together. Let's finish this prophecy."

She frowned, intelligent eyes narrowing with thought. I had clearly just dropped some incredibly valuable information behind this riddle, but not in a way she could immediately understand. Ultimately, though, her end mission remained the same. Kill a princess, or kill me. Break the prophecy, not finish it.

"I will not be yours," she repeated, and stepped forward, red-and-black scythe at the ready. She, too, did not summon her demons to gang up on me. Whether that was out of honor like Aeneas or because the elves had killed them all, I didn't know. But it wouldn't have mattered either way.

It was a decent fight. She was better than Aeneas, but perhaps due to lacking the rigorous training enforced upon religious disciples, she was no Rose. I let her stay on the offensive at first, to get a feel for her skill, but her flurry of blows could hardly be called a proper flurry. I parried each with ease, barely breaking a sweat, and then launched a flurry of my own, holding back just enough that she could barely block each one when putting forth all her efforts.

Flaming branches and dead trees fell all around us as we dueled. It would have been a shame to just pommel strike her wrist at the start and end things before they began.

"You know," I said while launching a thrust to her neck, which she blocked. "This is kind of like a date."

"What?!" she exclaimed, completely caught off guard, and that was when I hit her wrist and made her drop her scythe. She stumbled, and I kicked her chest plate, knocking her onto her back. I casually stepped forward, pressing one foot against her chest plate and holding my sword out to her neck.

"I win. You can't beat me, and Aeneas can't beat Flare alone," I said. She looked up at me with awe; her shapely red jaw dropping slightly as she realized just how overwhelmingly superior with the blade I was. She did some calculations, then bit her lip; no doubt she realized I could have launched a pommel strike that fast before she even launched her first swing.

But her vexation didn't last long. A forlorn smile soon appeared on her face. "I never expected anything less," she said.

"Oh?"

"Yes." She leaned forward, and grabbed my arm. "Thank you for taking the bait."

"Er... What?" I asked, but her only answer was a bright light that started to shine by her neck. She had on some kind of necklace, and it was shining now, brighter and brighter. It got to be so blinding I couldn't even look at it, but her grip on my arm stopped me from pulling away.

Ah. Shit.

It exploded, killing us both.